By Mark Baber
March 6 – Sudan’s qualification campaign for FIFA World Cup 2014 took a body blow when it had its win over Zambia turned into a loss after the country was found to have fielded an ineligible player.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 6 – Brazil’s World Cup preparations – or lack of them – have once again been called into question by FIFA, with Rio’s iconic Maracana stadium the biggest worry.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 6 – The future of Portsmouth, the stricken English club locked in administration for over a year with debts of about £60m, could finally be resolved next month – to the relief of the fans’ consortium hoping to take over.
By Mark Baber
March 6 – Pakistan is planning to launch a new football competition, modelled on the successful Indian Premier League for cricket, in a bid to overcome Pakistan football’s problems.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 6 – After more than a century without a commercial sponsor, Barcelona will break new ground next season by sporting the logo of Qatar Airways on its shirts – the starkest illustration yet of the club needing to embrace commercial reality as Qatar continues its drive to make inroads into European football.
By Paul Nicholson
March 6 – Fox Soccer channel looks set for closure as News Corp announced it will launch a new cable sports network in August taking ESPN head on in the national sports broadcast marketplace. Fox Sports 1 be available to more than 90 million pay- TV homes.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 5 – African football’s contentious presidential election was thrown even more sharply into focus today when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) threw out Jacques Anouma’s (pictured) last-ditch appeal against being barred from taking on the veteran incumbent Issa Hayatou.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 5 – The International FA Board, football’s law-making body that has stood the test of time for over a century, looks set to repel any attempt to change its role or expand its personnel as the eternal guardians of the sport.
March 5 – Egypt has started its league after a year’s suspension following the Port Said disaster where 74 fans were killed, but now the financial burden of sustaining clubs and playing squads looks to be hitting as players at one club are refusing to train.
By Mark Baber
March 5 – Xpro, the charity for ex-professional players, has revealed the shocking fact that three out of five Premier League players go bankrupt within five years of retirement.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 5 – The idea of the two Glasgow giants abandoning Scottish football and being integrated into the English league has once again been raised – this time by Rangers chief executive Charles Green.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 5 – After months of inconclusive meetings and several delays, English Premier League club West Ham could now be days away from finally securing agreement to move into the London 2012 Olympic stadium – and avoid it becoming a classic post-Games white elephant.
By Andrew Warshaw, Chief Correspondent
March 5 – Rocked by corruption and controversy, Chinese football has gone for the boldest of coups in an effort to enhance its battered image on and off the field: signing up David Beckham.
By Paul Nicholson
March 5 – Manchester United may sit on top of the money league as the world’s most value sports club, but their colleagues in the Premier League are finding it much tougher to compete at their level, both on the pitch and off it.
By Paul Nicholson and Andrew Warshaw
March 4 – One of the three west Asian candidates seeking to replace Mohamed bin Hammam and run football in the entire Continent until 2015 has urged his two rivals to step aside to avoid a potentially damaging split.
As the Asian Football Confederation announced a four-man race for the presidency on May 2, Yousuf al Serkel (pictured), of United Arab Emirates, said he is to ask the two other regional candidates bidding against him to stand down. Read more …