February 16 – Beko has extended its sponsorship of FC Barcelona, establishing the Turkish domestic appliance brand as a main partner and FC Barcelona’s official Training Partner whilst remaining FC Barcelona’s first choice for home appliances. Beko will also get a sleeve sponsorship position on the Barca shirt.
February 16 – Morocco says it will build seven new stadiums if it upsets the rival bid of USA-Canada-Morocco to land the 2026 World Cup.
January 16 – Having signed a co-operation agreed with Qatari football, the charm offensive by English FA chairman Greg Clarke (pictured) across international stakeholders has moved on to Jordan where he visited the famed Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in the north of the country.
By Samindra Kunti
February 16 – The forthcoming Indian Women’s League will have no participants from the Indian Super League and I-League, leaving the league in its second edition without the support of India’s highest profile men’s clubs.
February 16 – For years, the 50 plus 1 ownership rule in the Bundesliga, which effectively prevents reckless profit-driven owners from taking over clubs, has been held up as a bastion of commercial fair play.
February 16 – Conmebol is reportedly considering moving its headquarters out of Paraguay, where it has resided since 1986, after losing a $10 million lawsuit.
February 16 – Former English league coach Barry Bennell, the figure at the heart of English football’s child abuse scandal, has been found guilty of three more charges of sexual abuse against young players mainly in the 1980s and is due to be sentenced on Monday.
February 16 – Scotland finally have a manager to succeed Gordon Strachan – very much a sense of déjà vu. Alex McLeish has agreed to take over for the second time – 11 years after leaving the post.
February 16 – Germany’s Bundesliga has reported first half of 2017-18 season attendances as being the second-highest average attendance in Bundesliga history at 43,429 fans per match.
February 16 – Research by the CIES Football Observatory into the age ranges within clubs in 31 top division European leagues finds that the most competitive clubs are the ones with older squads.
By David Owen
February 15 – German professional football remains an oasis of financial solidity. The Deutsche Fussball Liga (DFL)’s 2018 Report on the economic state of the sector reveals that the clubs in the top two tiers of Western Europe’s most populous nation – Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 – for the first time generated aggregate revenues of more than €4 billion in 2016-17.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 15 – Several years after the incident first hit the headlines, Spanish prosecutors have dramatically reopened a case against 41 individuals, including 36 players, over alleged matchfixing relating to a top-flight survival decider between Levante and Real Zaragoza.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 15 – Football politics moves in unpredictable ways. Not so long ago, then English FA chief Greg Dyke criticised Qatar being awarded the rights to stage the 2022 World Cup as the “worst moment” in FIFA’s history.
February 15 – The regime of Chechnyan strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has hit back at suggestions that the region’s capital Grozny should be stripped by FIFA as a World Cup base for Egypt next summer.
February 15 – The Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) which has long been battling criminal matchfixing gangs operating within its leagues, has unveiled a new education strategy that will see 32 workshops per season covering referees, BFU officials and all players in the country’s top two tiers.