April 6 – Professional footballers often try to extend their careers as long as possible by dropping into the lower leagues but the international Players union FIFPro has warned that more than one in three former players over the age of 40 are now suffering from knee cartilage damage, “risking their long-term health or are unaware of the lasting effects of serious knee injuries.”
April 5 – British referees have invariably commanded global respect but none will take part in this year’s World Cup in Russia, the first such absence in 80 years.
April 3- A group of Olympiakos players have been fined €400,000 and ordered to go on holiday for the rest of the season by club president Evangelos Marinakis following a string of poor results.
March 29 – Three weeks ago Internazionale vice-president Javier Zanetti was in Beirut opening the clubs first Inter Academy in Lebanon. Last week he was doing the same in Budapest, Hungary. This week he is in his native Argentina inaugurated two new schools to the network.
March 27 – Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur are the only European clubs that have a player in each of the seven categories of a ranking of top performing players over the past three months.
March 19 – Are you watching, Gianni Infantino? Forty-eight hours after the FIFA president triumphantly hailed the official introduction of video technology, hundreds of Lazio supporters demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the Italian football federation to protest about the system whilst there was more controversy in the English game.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 19 – Despite reservations far and wide, as anticipated FIFA’s ruling Council has rubber-stamped the decision earlier this month by football’s lawmakers to approve video assistant referees for the World Cup and beyond.
March 16 – FIFA’s ruling Council are expected to rubber-stamp video assistant referees being used at this summer’s World Cup at their meeting in Bogota today despite lingering opposition from within the game.
March 16 – The German Football Association has parted ways with national women’s team coach Steffi Jones, following a disappointing SheBelieves Cup in the United States. Horst Hrubesch (pictured) will succeed her on an interim basis.
March 15 – Mauricio Pellegrino, the ninth manager to be sacked in the Premier League this season, is to be replaced at Southampton by Mark Hughes, the eighth Premier League manager to be sacked this term.
March 15 – Training your own talent is no guarantee of success at club level though the stats suggest that it gives a slight advantage. Players who spent at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21 in the club accounted for almost 25% of champion winning team squads, compared to only about 20% for all clubs surveyed.
March 7 – Money, it seems, has once again has failed to buy success for Paris St Germain who continue to wait to land Europe’s biggest club prize.
March 6 – The latest CIES Football Observatory data report looks at the clubs with the best ratios between shots taken and conceded from inside the box during the current domestic league season.
March 5 – After a detailed study and a two-year experiment, football’s lawmakers have officially approved the use of a fourth substitute being used in extra time, starting with the World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw in Zurich
March 4 – So now it’s official. No turning back. But are there still more questions than answers? As anticipated, video assistant referees are set to be used at this year’s World Cup in Russia after football’s lawmakers, the International FA Board (IFAB), voted to roll out the technology when they met at FIFA headquarters in Zurich on Saturday.