By Paul Nicholson
December 5 – Greek champions PAOK, and their fans, have responded furiously to allegations that owner Ivan Savvidis also controls Greek Super League club Xanthi FC.
December 5 – UEFA has announced the introduction of a new 16-team group stage for the Women’s Champions League from the 2021-22 season with centralised marketing and TV sales programme raise revenues and the profile of the women’s club game.
December 5 – UEFA wants to tweak the qualifying process for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, allowing a pathway via the Nations League to reach the global finals.
By Paul Nicholson
December 4 – A club ownership storm has broken in Greece linking controversial Russian-Greek oligarch Ivan Savvidis to control of two clubs in the Greek Super League.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 4 – UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has re-iterated his long-held view that more needs to be done to combat racism in European football following an unwelcome resurgence of discrimination across the Continent, from Bulgaria to Italy.
December 3 – Javier Tebas has resigned as La Liga president, but the Spanish football administrator will stand for re-election.
December 3 – Lionel Messi is football. At least he is when it comes to award ceremonies with the Argentinean last night picking up a record sixth Ballon d’Or, edging Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk by a mere seven points.
November 29 – In a ruling that prompted outrage among relatives of the victims, the police commander in charge of operations at Britain’s worst sporting disaster, the Hillsborough stadium tragedy, was acquitted Thursday of gross negligence manslaughter.
November 29 – Liverpool begin the first stage of a public consultation exercise today for the proposed expansion of their Anfield stadium to a capacity of more than 61,000.
November 27 – Russia will be able to compete at Euro 2020, and play its part in co-hosting the 12-city tournament in St. Petersburg, even if a four-year doping-related ban on the country comes into effect.
November 27 – In what was surely a first, Bruges had two players sent off after a stoppage-time equaliser away at Galatasaray on Tuesday night in the Champions League.
November 26 – Feyenoord have been banned from selling tickets to their fans for next month’s Europe League game at Porto.
November 26 – The controversial president of Italian club Brescia is facing accusations of racism after wading into the debate over striker Mario Balotelli who earlier this month briefly walked off in protest at being targeted by Hellas Verona fans.
By David Owen
November 25 – Their reign at the top could not quite match the 25 years – and counting – of Alexander Lukashenko, the country’s president. Nonetheless, BATE Borisov’s dethroning on Sunday as national champions of Belarus very much qualifies as ‘the end of an era’.
It may be unprecedented for a city which stages the World Cup to host the subsequent European Championships but St. Petersburg is gearing up once again to take centre stage with three group games and a quarterfinal of the pan-European 2020 finals. In his second report from Russia, Andrew Warshaw reports from a city that promises to rekindle memories of the riveting atmosphere that pervaded last year’s global competition.