By Andrew Warshaw
April 16 – Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter says Qatar should be stripped of the 2022 World Cup as a result of the latest FIFAgate revelations, with the United States best-placed to step in as replacement hosts.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 15 – Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has hailed the dropping of criminal mismanagement charges against him by Swiss prosecutors as a partial success in his bid to clear name and has dragged his successor Gianni Infantino into the narrative by implying Infantino was partly behind a conspiracy against him.
April 14 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has warned countries not to start playing football again too early since safety has to come first.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 8 – Qatar’s World Cup organisers, who thought they had finally moved on from years of suspicion and finger-pointing over the process by which they were awarded the 2022 tournament, have been forced to deny fresh allegations of corruption and bribery.
April 8 – FIFA has now confirmed reports that the summer transfer window is being pushed back into whatever gap ends up being between the seasons, and that player contracts due to end June 30 will be extended.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 7 – Football may be postponed indefinitely on the field but off it, the FIFAgate scandal has burst into new life with a fresh catalogue of explosive indictments and allegations relating to widespread bribery, notably over the awards of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.
April 7 – The summer transfer window will be amended, the 2019-20 season extended indefinitely and player contracts ending on June 30 put back for a short period under radical proposals about to be announced by FIFA, according to unconfirmed reports.
April 6 – As a consequence of the global health crisis, FIFA has taken a number of sweeping decisions that will reshape various age group tournaments.
April 6 – On Sunday, Jose Maria Marin, 87, returned home to his native Brazil. The disgraced former football official spent five years detained overseas following his arrest and conviction in the FIFAgate scandal.
April 1 – FIFA is to set up an emergency fund to assist the football industry amid growing fears that the coronavirus crisis will bring the sport to its knees.
March 31 – Jose Maria Marin, 87, is on his way home. Amid health concerns in times of the global coronavirus pandemic, the former Brazilian football supremo has won his release from an American prison, where he was serving a four-year sentence for his role in the FIFAgate scandal.
March 27 – FIFA have drawn up radical plans to offset football being wiped off the map by Covid-19 by recommending player contracts be extended automatically until the end of the season (whatever date that becomes) and to push transfer windows back.
March 25 – Kenyan football has been plunged into further crisis after FIFA over-ruled a local judgement that threw out the national federation’s entire executive.
March 24 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino, whose expansionist plans for world football created widespread consternation among various stakeholders, now concedes the game needs to go the other way to help avoid a financial crisis because of Covid-19.
March 20 – FIFA has teamed up with the World Health Organisation (WHO) for a new awareness campaign in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.