By Andrew Warshaw
July 16 – UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has issued a veiled swipe at FIFA for not sufficiently scrutinising how their development grants are being used by member federations.
July 5 – Claims that embattled former Barcelona chief Sandro Rosell illegally bought a liver for French international defender Eric Abidal have been vehemently denied by the club and roundly condemned.
June 27 – UEFA is lifting its alcohol ban during Champions League and Europa League matches “within the limits permitted under national and local law”.
June 22 – Germany’s Bundesliga has again reported attendance figures that make it the most highly attended league in world football. The numbers for the 2017/18 season are the second highest in the league’s history.
June 19 – Germany could have done with the inspirational but now-retired Philipp Lahm when they kicked off their World Cup campaign against Mexico.
By Paul Nicholson
June 11 – UEFA and FIFA’s failure to get any kind of control or governance over Greek football is reaching unprecedented levels even by their own woeful standards. The integrity of the game in Greece was hammered again with news that champion club AEK’s owner Dimitris Melissanidis is under investigation for accounting fraud.
June 11 – One of the main architects in getting Kosovo recognised as an international football federation and admitted as a UEFA and FIFA member, Fadil Vokrri, has passed away aged 57.
June 7 – A Croatian court has sentenced the former boss of Dinamo Zagreb, Zdravko Mamic (pictured right with brother Zoran), to six-and-a-half years in prison for tax evasion and siphoning off profits from player transfers, allegedly including that of Luka Modric to Tottenham Hotspur and Mateo Kovacic to Inter.
June 6 – Veteran Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon has been suspended for three games by UEFA in the wake of his red card and behaviour during Juventus’ Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid.
June 6 – UEFA will give a record €2.04 billion to clubs playing in the Champions League and Europa League next season, a more than €800 million increase on last season.
June 5 – Manchester City’s Premier League-winning manager Pep Guardiola has been handed a two-game suspension by UEFA for his conduct during the defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League quarter-finals.
May 31 – Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema has slammed French Football Federation chief Noel Le Graet, who has claimed that the French national team has moved on from the striker.
May 31 – The Turkish Football Federation (TFF) has hailed the decision to award the final of the 2020 Champions League Final to Istanbul as a positive move in the build-up to the September ballot to choose the 2024 Euro hosts.
May 31 – The UEFA Europa League is getting a new look for next season that UEFA says will emphasise the “scale and dynamic nature of the competition.”
May 30 – West Ham United have been catapulted straight into the top division of the restructured Women’s Super League in England, while Manchester United have been awarded a license for the second tier Women’s Championship for their newly formed team.