By Paul Nicholson
February 7 – The fledgling third tier professional division of US football – USL Division III has named FC Tucson as the second fanchise, following the announcement last week of South Georgia Tormenta FC as the first founder member of the league scheduled to kick off in 2019.
February 7 – The mini-bond launched by sports investment platform Tifosy for Italy’s Serie B club Frosinone, has reached its €1.5 million target.
February 6 – PepsiCo have renewed their sponsorship of the UEFA Champions League for a second three-year cycle taking them from the start of the 2018/19 until 2021. The deal also includes sponsorship of the UEFA Super Cup in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
February 6 – The three biggest transfers in the winter window - Philippe Coutinho (€160m), Virgil van Dijk (€84m) and Diego Costa (€66m) – were all concluded at a higher value than the real worth of the players, according to analysis by the CIES Football Observatory. Liverpool overpaid by €21 million for van Dijk, but balanced that with Barca’s overpayment of €13 million for Coutinho. Chelsea managed to get an impressive €26 million more than CIES’s estimated real value for Costa.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 6 – Pressure is mounting on Spanish authorities to sort out the aftermath of veteran powerbroker Angel Villar’s demise after yet another intervention by FIFA.
February 6 – It’s been a source of debate for years and years. Should English football copy much of Continental Europe and introduce a Winter break? So far the idea has been resisted both for commercial and traditional reasons, but now the Premier League has revealed it is looking at ways of going down that road.
February 6 – Crime-busting police forces in Malaysia have been directed to flush out matchfixing among players, coaches and the management of league teams.
By Mark Baber
February 6 – The General Sports Authority (GSA), Saudi Football Federation and the Saudi Telecom Co. (STC) on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding by which STC will have the sole rights for transmission of local football matches and the matches of Saudi national team.
February 6 – Crystal Palace’s resurgence from bottom of the league to mid-table competitiveness may have slowed in recent weeks, but the clubs’ fans still manage to find more seats to fill at Selhurst Park than the ground’s official capacity. Roy Hodgson is clearly working some kind of magic with fans in south-east London that deserted him in his last job with England.
February 6 – Brazil’s top division has rejected implementing video technology both because of cost and uncertainty over the system’s consistency.
By Samindra Kunti in Casablanca, Morocco
February 5 – Edouard Ngaissona from the Central African Republic (CAR) has sparked more controversy and suspicion over football governance in Africa after being elected to the Executive Committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the top table of football decision making in the region.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 5 – FIFA’s strict (some might argue over-the-top) directive to its member federations not to break any rules during the current lobbying campaign for the 2026 World Cup has led to understandable irritation at the head of African football’s leadership.
February 5 – The bitter in-fighting over who runs the game in Sierra Leone has burst back into the spotlight after FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura (pictured right with Isha Johansen) with wrote to the country’s sports minister, Ahmed Khanou, warning him not to interfere.
By Samindra Kunti in Casablanca, Morocco
February 5 – In the pouring rain Morocco waltzed to a superb maiden African Nations Championship title, crushing ten-men Nigeria 4-0. Morocco’s Ayoub El Kaabi, CHAN’s top scorer with nine goals, was named player of the tournament.
February 5 – The move by clubs into general entertainment television programming via reality style behind-the scenes shows has now been taken a step further with Barcelona reportedly in preliminary talks with Disney-owned Pixar over the making of an animated feature film.