November 5 – The trend of increasing numbers of non-domestic players in top division teams appears to have slowed with 41.8% of players in 31 European leagues now being expatriates. This is still an increase of 0.2% over last year but is less that the 1.2% average increase seen between 2014 and 2018.
November 4 – Football moves in mysterious ways. Just one month after wowing the whole of Europe with their sensational 7-2 win at Tottenham in the Champions League, Bayern Munich have sacked Niko Kovac as manager following Saturday’s 5-1 defeat at Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga – their heaviest defeat in a decade.
October 31 – Norwegian striker Ada Hegerberg has broken the goalscoring record in the Women’s Champions League, becoming the competition’s all-time top scorer with 53 goals following a brace on Wednesday against Denmark’s Fortuna Hjorring.
October 29 – Following a spate of controversial VAR decisions in the English top flight, some of them totally absurd, Premier League chiefs have finally agreed to consider a change in policy on the use of pitch-side monitors.
October 29 – Jaap Stam has resigned as coach of Feyenoord after a disappointing seven-month spell in Rotterdam.
By Samindra Kuni in Cariacica, Brazil
October 28 – Hosts Brazil kicked off the U-17 World Cup with a comfortable 4-1 win over Canada. Nigeria, Angola and Senegal all won their games, but European champions Netherlands suffered a surprise 3-0 defeat by Japan.
October 23 – Real Madrid top a ranking of Big 5 league clubs who have the trained the most players active in professional football.
October 21 – Another weekend, another raging VAR controversy, this time surrounding Liverpool’s high-profile globally televised fixture at Manchester United on Sunday with Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp declaring the way the technology is being used in England does not make “too much sense”.
October 17 – Two English players top an ‘experience’ ranking of young players. Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho (pictured) and Tottenham’s Ryan Sessegnon lead the way in a top 20 that has ten young players coming from Europe’s Big 5 leagues and four of them from England’s Premier League.
October 16 – Bulgarian FA chief Borislav Mihaylov (pictured) resigned on Tuesday in the wake of the racism that marred his country’s Euro 2020 qualifier against England the previous day.
October 16 – Spain qualified for Euro 2020 with a last-gasp 1-1 draw away to Sweden. They join Belgium, Italy, Poland, Russia and Ukraine in next year’s finals.
October 14 – The United Soccer League (USL) that recently announced David Beckham’s Miami FC and MLS old-stager new England Revolution as entering development teams in its third tier League One division, has added performance data providers PlayerMaker as a ‘preferred partner’.
October 10 -Lionel Messi has revealed wanted to leave Spain in the midst of his case for tax fraud because of the way he was being treated but stayed when no offers emerged.
By Samindra Kunti
October 9 – Anderlecht have defended Vincent Kompany’s role as player-coach at the Belgian FA, denying that Simon Davies was a ‘shadow’ coach in place only to give Kompany the qualifications back-up required in Belgium.
October 7 – Brazilian coach Sylvinho has been dismissed by his club Olympique Lyon after Sunday’s derby defeat against local rivals AS Saint-Etienne and just one win in nine. At AC Milan, Marco Giampolo is also on the way out.