By Andrew Warshaw in Astana
March 27 – UEFA president Michel Platini laid down the gauntlet to FIFA today to stop “hiding behind committees” and have the “political courage” to get far tougher on Third Party Ownership (TPO), declaring that European football would otherwise go it alone in their own competitions to stamp out the growing practise.
By Alexander Krassimirov
March 26 – UEFA has begun a match-fixing investigation into the European Championship Under 19 game between Bulgaria and Portugal. The match was played in June 2013 and ended with a comprehensive 7-0 win for Portugal.
By Andrew Warshaw in Astana
March 26 – A fresh and more stringent crackdown on match-fixing and the rubber-stamping of a brand new European competition, the Nations League, to replace international friendlies look set to be the main items agreed by UEFA’s 54 member nations tomorrow.
By Andrew Warshaw in Astana
March 26 – A handful of countries who initially expressed interest in staging matches at the pan-European 2020 finals have pulled out of the running, UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino (pictured) revealed today.
By Mark Baber
March 26 – Chairman of the Czech Football Association, Miroslav Pelta has responded to violence at Saturday’s match between Baník Ostrava and league leaders Sparta Prague by calling for anti-hooligan measures to be adopted with the return of police to stadiums and fan registration cards mooted.
By Mark Baber
March 26 – Major League Soccer (MLS) has announced a multi-year partnership deal with Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, with Etihad becoming the official airline partner of MLS in the United States.
By David Owen
March 26 – European clubs have hoovered up nearly all the €27 million in compensation money paid out over the first 18 months of FIFA’s Club Protection Programme (CPP).
FIFA’s new financial report isn’t just the financial story of last year; it also offers a fascinating window on to the future. This is in the form of the governing body’s budget for the 2015-18 business cycle.
Readers shouldn’t look on this as set in concrete; some might say it isn’t even set in custard: not even Madame FIFA can gaze into her crystal ball with anything approaching infallibility.
But it does offer an informative glimpse into how Joseph Blatter and his chums think the medium-term future might pan out.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 25 – European Parliament officials believe Qatar is already making up ground to get to grips to with the workers’ rights issue that has plagued 2022 World Cup organisers.
March 25 – Not a fan of Qatar and aware of numerous potential and obvious downsides (debilitating summer heat above all), we have always kept an open mind about a World Cup in the Middle East, once the hosting rights were allotted.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
March 25 – Following a March 2 match which was abandoned halfway after opposition fans starting fighting in the stadium, Legia Warsaw is reviewing its safety measures and has hired a UK-based security company to perform an audit at the Pepsi Arena.
Not a fan of Qatar and aware of numerous potential and obvious downsides (debilitating summer heat above all), we have always kept an open mind about a World Cup in the Middle East, once the hosting rights were allotted.
The opposition towards the tiny Emirate has always been virulent. Even during the bidding phase, critics from all sorts of corners crept out from all sorts of rocks built on bias. Others, genuine ones without an agenda,
March 25 – The mayor of Porto Alegre has warned the city may be forced to drop out of the World Cup if key legislation is not approved this week.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
March 25 – FIFA has side-stepped a potential new storm after it emerged that tentative moves were taken last week by senior figures to try and shut down the probe into the voting procedure for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and remove chief prosecutor Michael Garcia from the process.
March 25 – FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke is back in Brazil for another series of trouble-shooting World Cup meetings, this time focussing on Sao Paulo, which stages the opening game.