By Andrew Warshaw
January 23 – Russia’s under-fire senior football powerbroker Vitaly Mutko, allegedly caught up in the country’s damning doping scandal, reportedly ignored a private request from FIFA president Gianni Infantino to withdraw from the spotlight.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 23 – Any hopes Gianni Infantino may have that FIFA has buried its toxic past have again been laid bare with yet another former prominent official banned for life by FIFA’s own ethics committee.
January 2 – Germany’s Bundesliga will become the first major league to use video assistant referees next season for game-changing decisions.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 19 – Not to be outdone by the innovations of his boss Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s new technical director Marco van Basten has come up with arguably the most ground-breaking blueprint ever for the future of football including scrapping offside and introducing sin-bins in place of yellow cards.
January 18 – Liverpool expect to discover on Friday whether Joel Matip is eligible to play for them as confusion continues over the defender’s availability.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 27 – FIFA faces accusations of buck-passing and shirking its responsibility after effectively telling Liverpool to make up their own minds and suffer the consequences over whether to select Cameroon defender Joel Matip after he declined to represent his country in the African Nations Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 16 – An Israeli-based media watchdog has sent a detailed and highly damning file on Palestine football leader Jibril Rajoub to FIFA in the latest tit-for-tat exchange over the sensitive issue over Israel’s treatment of Palestinian players and officials in the occupied territories.
January 16 – The British sponsorship consultant widely acknowledged as one of the pioneers of modern sports marketing has described as “absurd” FIFA’s decision to expand the World Cup to 48 teams.
January 13 – Is Morocco secretly planning to put a spanner in the works of a 2026 CONCACAF World Cup bid?
By Andrew Warshaw
All the benefits with no negatives. So proclaimed Gianni Infantino immediately after this week’s seismic decision to expand the World Cup to 48 teams. This is not about politics, he said. This is not about money. This is purely about serving football and redressing the game’s imbalances. Does anyone in their right mind really believe that?
January 12 – Different regime, new ‘Watchgate’ probe. FIFA has filed a report with police in Switzerland after six Hublot watches embarrassingly went missing before Monday’s Best Awards gala in Zurich.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 11 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has defended the expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams, insisting the change from 32 was based on “sporting merit” and not a money-making exercise despite his need to find promised additional revenue for FIFA’s 211 members.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 11 – CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani has given another strong hint that the first 48-team World Cup could be jointly staged by the USA, Mexico and his native Canada.
By Andrew Warshaw
January 11 – FIFA appears to be no closer to a solution to the increasingly fractious dispute in the Middle East and specifically the issue of Israeli lower-league clubs based in the occupied West Bank.
January 10 – Despite losing the battle over FIFA’s decision to expand the World Cup finals, the European Club Association (ECA) says it is still vehemently opposed to the idea.