By Paul Nicholson in the Bahamas
April 16 – Speaking at the opening of the CONCACAF Congress in the Bahamas today (Thursday) FIFA president Sepp Blatter told his audience of national federations their confederation should have four automatic places at the FIFA World Cup.
By Samindra Kunti
April 17 – Next season the women’s Super League will replace the BeNe League in Belgium. Eight teams will compete in the newly designed league format with the champions crowned after play-offs.
April 17 – Marco Polo Del Nero has officially succeeded Jose Maria Marin as the president of the CBF, the Brazilian Football Confederation.
By Mark Baber
April 17 – The Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) is the latest football governing body to see vicious infighting, with allegations of corruption, attempts to disqualify potential electoral opponents, threats of legal action and attempts by the incumbent to lever FIFA’s power against potential rivals, prior to this Friday’s Punjabi Football Association (PFA) elections.
April 16 – UEFA have decided to take no action against Real Madrid defender Dani Carvajal following allegations that he bit Atletico forward Mario Mandzukic in Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final, first leg between the city rivals.
By Paul Nicholson in the Bahamas
April 16 – For anyone taking the global annual football confederation congress tour, the Caribbean is the current stop on the schedule which will end in Zurich in May with the main event of the election of the FIFA president. And as in previous elections, the Caribbean is having its day in the FIFA political sun.
April 16 – While their federation presidents were in the Bahamas at the CONCACAF Congress, 15 clubs from nine Caribbean Football Union (CFU) member associations were starting their quest for qualification to the CONCACAF Champions League for the 2015/16 next season.
April 16 – Manchester United are to return to the US for their pre-season tour this summer and will defend their ‘International Champions Cup’ title which they won last last year.
April 15 – Croatian football, marred by constant problems involving hooligan fans, is back in the spotlight again for all the wrong reasons after national team coach Niko Kovac was assailed by a group of supporters wearing Hajduk Split colours.
April 15 – Bulgarian football is facing yet another potential match-fixing scandal following allegations of games being manipulated in the country’s second division.
April 15 – Anything Torpedo Moscow can do when it comes to discrimination, Spartak Moscow can seemingly match. Within days of Torpedo being found guilty of racism and ordered to play two more home games behind closed doors after their fourth offense of the season, so Spartak Moscow have been punished after fans displayed racist images during the April 9 fixture at Arsenal Tula.
By Mark Baber
April 15 – Football has made it on to the election agenda in the UK with the Labour Party making a manifesto commitment to introduce legislation to allow football supporters to appoint club directors and also to give fans the right to purchase shares in their club when there is a change of ownership.
By Ricardo Setyon
April 15 – The writing was on wall from the moment the decision was taken to build. The Arena Amazonia – a beautiful and giant stadium, in the heart of Manaus, the capital city of the most important forest on Earth, and constructed for the greatest show on Earth, the FIFA World Cup – has become a monument to Brazilian football’s financial folly. A legacy nightmare.
April 14 – Australia has given a lukewarm response to the idea of co-hosting the World Cup with New Zealand. Oceania is the only Continent still to stage the tournament and the Kiwis are apparently eyeing up the possibility of sharing the tournament with their neighbour.
April 14 – This Thursday the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) will gather its national federations in Bahamas for what will be the third annual congress under the presidency of Jeffrey Webb. It has been a period of dramatic transformation and reform for the confederation and produced a regional governing body that is virtually unrecognisable in comparison to what had gone before.