By Andrew Warshaw
October 15 – Forget the 6-0 scoreline, impressive though it was. The resurgence of racism sweeping through European football reached a new low at international level on Monday when England’s Euro 2020 qualifier in Bulgaria was halted twice after home fans were warned about racist behaviour including Nazi salutes and monkey chanting.
October 15 – A wave of political unrest in Ecuador has spilled over into football with world players’ union FIFPro calling for the women’s Copa Libertadores to be called off.
November 11 – In a fresh outbreak of regional geo-politics, Red Star Belgrade, Serbia’s leading team, was banned from entering Kosovo this week to play a Serbia Cup match against a local side, with the club’s bus prevented from crossing into the former Serbian province.
October 9 – England players are threatening to walk off the pitch all together if any of them receive racist abuse from the stands when they take on Bulgaria in Sofia in a World Cup qualifier next Monday.
By David Owen
October 8 – Flummoxed by Brexit and with a general election looming, Britain’s opposition Labour party has turned to the people’s game to try to build some much-needed political capital.
By Paul Nicholson
October 7 – The growth of the beoutQ broadcast piracy operation that has seen the emergence of beoutQ-enabled set-top boxes being retailed in countries around the world suffered a derailment in a London court on Friday with the conviction of a shop owner on two charges of copyright theft and two charges of fraud.
October 4 – Liverpool may have hoped the £1 million paid to Manchester City in 2013 over allegations that the club’s scouts had been spying on the activity of their Manchester counterparts had been brushed away. While the Premier League has shown no investigative interest in the ‘spygate’ row, the FA has asked to see Man City’s evidence surrounding the hacking.
October 3 – Cardiff City have decided to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against FIFA’s ruling that they must pay the first instalment of €6 million to Nantes for €17 million striker Emiliano Sala who died in January when the light aircraft carrying him to Cardiff two days after he signed crashed into the sea before he could play a single game.
October 3 – Manchester City’s Portuguese midfielder Bernardo Silva has been charged with misconduct by the Football Association over a tweet he sent to team-mate Benjamin Mendy.
October 2 – The former president of Valencia Juan Soler (pictured) has been jailed for two years for conspiring to kidnap his one-time vice-president and break into his home.
By Paul Nicholson
September 27 – FIFA’s move to reform the player transfer market are unlikely to go far enough to appease critics who say that in reality all the measures will do is keep the current system in place and postpone the issues indefinitely.
September 26 – The Swiss parliament has narrowly voted to extend the mandate of the country’s attorney general Michael Lauber despite a series of undocumented private meetings he held with FIFA president Gianni Infantino during his office’s handling of numerous cases of alleged FIFA-related corruption since 2015.
September 26 – The chairman of the Italian Olympics Committee has sparked fierce controversy by suggesting that diving is a more serious issue than racism in Italian football.
September 25 – A tweet posted by a Manchester City player about a teammate has been condemned by Britain’s Anti-racism group Kick It Out but played down by City manager Pep Guardiola.
September 24 – Two people who illegally accessed CCTV footage of Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala’s post-mortem examination and who were “driven by morbid curiosity” have been jailed.