June 5 – For millions of football fans all over the world the World Cup is not the World Cup without the official sticker album, particularly in the UK where a World Cup without the player swaps merry-go-round would be like Christmas without a fat man in a red suit coming down the chimney.
June 6 – West Ham have signed Taiwanese international airline Eva Air as the club’s first official airline partner.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – A bitter war of words row has broken out over Argentina’s upcoming pre-World Cup friendly against Israel with the head of the Palestine Football Association urging Arab fans to burn replica shirts of Lionel Messi if he plays and Israel’s backers countering the rhetoric by angrily protesting to FIFA.
June 4 – Eighteen months after the Swiss criminal investigation into corruption allegations over the awarding of the 2006 World Cup to Germany was broadened to include former FIFA general secretary Urs Linsi (pictured), he is now reported to be among four former leading administrators charged by German prosecutors with serious tax evasion.
June 4 – Ethiopian football has a new leader, albeit after a protracted election process, in Esayas Jira who takes over Juneidi Basha after polling 87 of 145 votes at the national federation’s General Assembly.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 2 – Publicly, they have put on a brave face and sent out a positive message. Privately, as well as being relieved, they must be mightily frustrated to put it mildly.
June 4 – Mastercard and FIFA just don’t seem to get along. No longer the official credit card of the World Cup – that right belongs to Visa – a hijack marketing campaign by Mastercard fell flat on its face at the weekend.
June 3 – Championship club Aston Villa that lost in the £160 million play-off game for the Premier League against Fulham, has become first club in EFL to launch its own esports league – AVFC Gaming.
June 3 – FIFA will return to London for the third edition of their Best Awards in September. Nominations will be released July 23, after the World Cup final in Russia, with public voting open until August 10.
By Paul Nicholson
June 1 – Outgoing Liberian FA (LFA) president Musa Bility is clearly not as outgoing as people had expected, with FIFA having again recognised the controversial CAF committee member as leader of football in the country, for the time being.
June 1 – First he was in, then he was out, he appealed, he lost, he appealed again. And now Peru captain Paolo Guerrero can play after all at the World Cup following a Swiss tribunal’s final verdict.
June 1 – Roman Abramovich, Chelsea’s Russian billionaire owner, has decided to put on hold a new 60,000-seater stadium following delays over the renewal of his UK visa.
June 1 – A member of Russia’s World Cup squad could be guilty of a doping violation according to famed whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov.
June 1 – Timed just two weeks before the FIFA Congress in Moscow, FIFA has lifted its suspension imposed on Guatemala 18 months ago over its failure to comply with anti-corruption rules.
June 1 – The French Football Federation and Coca-Cola have agreed a five-year extension of their long-standing partnership taking them through to June 2023.