Rio Olympics: Australia refuse to move into athletes village

Australia are refusing to move their athletes into the Rio Olympic Village because of concerns about the state of their accommodation.

Problems include "blocked toilets, leaking pipes and exposed wiring", according to team boss Kitty Chiller.

Chiller said she had raised concerns with local event organisers and the International Olympic Committee, and was "pushing hard for a solution".

Australian staff are in nearby hotels with the first athletes due on Monday.

Alternative accommodation for team members arriving over the next three days has been arranged.

The $1.5bn (£1.14bn) 31-building village has tennis courts, football pitches, seven swimming pools and will house 18,000 athletes and officials at the height of the Games, which start on 5 August, less than two weeks away.

Chiller, the head of Australia's Olympic delegation, said extra maintenance staff and more than 1,000 cleaners have been engaged to fix the problems but the faults, particularly the plumbing issues, have not been resolved.

She said in a statement on the Australian Olympic website: "Due to a variety of problems in the Village, including gas, electricity and plumbing, I have decided that no Australian team member will move into our allocated building.

"Problems include blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors in need of a massive clean."

Organisers have conceded there have been "teething troubles" and promised that crews would be "working 24 hours a day until the issues are resolved".

But Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes responded to Australian criticism by saying the Village is "more beautiful" than Sydney for the 2000 Games and that he was about to put "a kangaroo jumping outside" to "make them feel at home".

Football seeks to tackle Brexit fallout

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the mercurial Sweden striker, was the first high-profile footballer to feel the bite from Brexit — by the time he signed for Manchester United last week, his sterling-denominated pay packet was worth roughly 10 per cent less against the dollar.
Ibrahimovic did not balk at his deal — reportedly worth £220,000 a week — and currency fluctuations were not discussed at length during his negotiations.

But other clubs are taking advice on how Brexit will change how they sign players and the sharp fall in the pound will land clubs with higher bills for foreign players this summer.
“If there is a euro amount to a player’s buyout clause, that amount has become more expensive and has potentially scuppered deals,” said Daniel Geey, a sports lawyer at Sheridans.
One person close to a championship club said an Italian player demanded an increase in wages following Brexit because of the disadvantage of being paid in pounds. The deal subsequently fell through.
The summer transfer window — the three-month period when clubs can acquire players — opened in June. Clubs are expected to spend lavishly, since all 20 Premier League clubs can look forward to at least £100m of television rights revenue from a new £5.1bn deal with Sky and BT.
Last season, a record £1.045bn was spent in transfer fees in the Premier League, according to Deloitte.
The biggest clubs are hedged against currency, earning euros from playing in European competition and dollars from international sponsorship deals. But smaller clubs could feel stretched by the drop in the pound.
Beyond the summer, there could be issues over recruiting younger players, with EU rules currently allowing 16 to 18-year-olds from the EU to join youth academies in Britain. Cesc Fabregas, for example, joined Arsenal in 2003 aged 16 from Barcelona.
“Right now, currency is the big issue,” said a senior executive at one of the Premier League’s biggest clubs. “The bigger story is about player acquisition, transfers and player development. Everything will depend on the political settlement.”

If the rules for non-EU visas are applied to all countries after Brexit, it could also stop promising youngsters who joined the Premier League before they started playing for their national team, a key criteria.
These work permit rules could have excluded entry to some of last season’s most successful players, such as Frenchmen Dimitri Payet of West Ham, N’Golo Kante of Leicester City and Anthony Martial of Manchester United.
Brexit could also change Britain’s status as one of the power brokers of world football. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland together have a combined 50 per cent of the vote at the International Football Association Board, the global game’s pre-eminent rulemaking body. This gives the so-called “home” nations an effective veto over the laws of the game.
Stefan Szymanski, author of Money and Football: A Soccernomics Guide, said this special status was afforded to Britain decades ago and left unchallenged because of the stability these closely-connected countries provide.
He said: “There could be a movement that says, while we’re in the process of downgrading [the UK’s] status in the world, why don’t we remove some of these anachronisms as well?”