By Richard van Poortvliet
May 12 – Zenit St. Petersburg are in yet more trouble with the Russian Football Union after one of their supporters punched Dynamo Moscow defender Vladimir Granat in the head, towards the end of their Russian Premier League tie.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
May 12 – Municipal authorities in Katowice have bought shares worth PLN 1.1 million (€280,000) in their local football club GKS. The deal follows two other acquisitions of shares made earlier this year making a total of PLN 2 million (€510,000) invested to date.
May 9- Europe’s leading professional leagues have come out in opposition to switching the Qatar World Cup in 2022 from summer to winter, seemingly putting themselves on a collision course with Fifa which most observers believe is edging nearer and nearer to formally adopting a change of timing.
By Mark Baber
May 9- Sparked by the recent massacre in Odessa, the Ukrainian Football Federation (FFU) has ruled that the next round of league games, as well as the cup final, will be held behind closed doors, whilst no matches will be held in the troubled Donetsk, Luhansk, Odessa and Kharkiv regions.
May 9 –Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund has forged strong links to the ex-patriate Polish community in its local area. So much so that the club has a significant Polish player contingent and even a major Polish sponsor. In an exclusive interview with leading Polish sports businesss website www.temporada.pl, Dortmund’s head of business development Benedikt Scholz (pictured) explains the club’s strategy approach to maximising its Polish connections.
By Mark Baber
May 9 – Spain’s Secretary of State for Sport Miguel Cardenal (pictured) revealed Thursday that professional clubs in the county’s First and Second Division have accumulated debts of €3.573 billion, according to data from the Sports Council.
May 8 – Louis van Gaal, Holland’s coach at the World Cup, has given the broadest hint yet that he will succeed David Moyes as the next full-time boss of Manchester United.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 8 – Villarreal have been fined just €12,000 by the Spanish Football Federation for the already infamous racism incident when a fan threw a banana at Barcelona defender Dani Alves.
May 8 – Bloomberg Sports is rolling out its advanced match analytics products for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The stats-based service for fans has been operating across Europe’s major leagues this season, primarily as a betting service allied with its match predictor tools.
By David Owen
May 7 – A French second division team has named a female manager in a milestone for gender equality in the sport. Helena Costa, 36, from Portugal will take over at Clermont Foot 63, currently 14th in Ligue 2, for next season.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 7 – The dangerous political tensions in Ukraine have forced a number of league fixtures as well as the domestic cup final to be relocated from the country’s pro-Russian eastern cities as well as the Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula for security reasons.
May 7 – The Italian government says it will crack down on hooliganism following the mayhem that marred last weekend’s domestic cup final in Rome.
May 7 – An English second-tier striker has been has been handed a suspended three-month ban and fined £60,000 in the latest breach of football’s betting rules to hit English football.
By David Owen
May 6 – The Football Association (FA)’s national football centre will be a hive of activity next month while Roy Hodgson’s England squad are on the other side of the Atlantic in Brazil attempting to win the country’s second FIFA World Cup and their first in nearly 50 years.
By Richard van Poortvliet
May 6 – Russia could be about to introduce a salary cap for its clubs, according to the Honorary President of the Russian Football Union, Vyacheslav Koloskov (pictured). The Russian State Duma took the lead in promoting the idea to the association.