Inside World Football - Page 1292 of 2206 - For the Business of Football

Double top for Manchester as City out-tweet United. Everton out-twitter Spurs

March 7 – It was not going to be a second week of double top for Manchester United but it was a double top for the city. United continued their long run leading the weekly Twitter growth in followers tables, but plummeted to 13th place in the most tweets for the week table with less than half the number of tweets of the previous EFL Cup winning week. Instead Man City took over the weekly lead in the tweets ranking.

Broadcast

BT Sport grab Champions League rights in £1.2bn exclusive deal

TV camera

March 7 – Having complained about the ever-inflating cost of broadcast rights to football, BT Sport has stumped up a huge £1.18 billion for UEFA Champions League rights that will see the world’s leading club competition exclusively on the pay broadcaster in the UK for the three seasons from 2018-19 to 2020-21.

Performance

De Bruyne and Otamendi lead Europe’s top performers. Ronaldo strikes again

March 7 – Two Manchester City players – Kevin de Bruyne and Nicolas Otamendi – lead the way in an analysis of Europe’s top players so far this season across six technical performance categories.

Concacaf

El Salvador’s Vasquez escapes extradition but gets 8 year sentence at home

March 7 – The former president of El Salvador’s football federation (FESFUT), who is wanted in the United States for alleged corruption, has been sentenced to eight years in jail for labour fraud.

FIFA

Africans complete their line up for U20 World Cup in South Korea

By Samindra Kunti

March 7 – Senegal and South Africa have completed the line-up of the U20 2017 FIFA World Cup in South Korea after advancing to the semi-finals of the U20 CAF African Cup of Nations.

Russia 2018

Russian political genius pitches ‘World Cup of fan fighting’ concept. TV rights anyone?

March 7 – A Russian politician has proposed a somewhat unorthodox solution to the country’s hooliganism problem ahead of next year’s World Cup: legalise it and turn it into a spectator sport.

Finance

Swans report £14.6m loss as management change drives up costs

Swansea fans

By David Owen

March 6 – Swansea City have become the latest Premier League outfit to report a downturn in financial performance. The South Wales club, making good headway on the pitch under new manager Paul Clement, have posted a £14.6 million pre-tax loss for the year to July 31.

South America

Player strike is latest block to resumption of Argentine league

By Samindra Kunti

March 6 – This weekend’s matches in Argentina’s top three divisions were all postponed following a players’s strike over salaries. With professional football on hold, the institutional crisis in Argentinean football is deepening.

FIFA

Dodd campaigns for equality, Asia and a seat on the FIFA Council

Moya Dodd 2

By Andrew Warshaw

March 6 – Moya Dodd, one of the first women to serve on FIFA’s ‘old’ executive committee as a co-opted member and a forceful campaigner for gender equality, is two months away from finding out whether she will still have a major role to play at FIFA’s top table.

Africa

Ahmad wins Djibouti support in battle to take over from Hayatou

By Andrew Warshaw

March 6 – Djibouti is the latest country to come out publicly and say it is supporting the challenger Ahmad Ahmad (pictured) in the forthcoming Confederation of African Football (CAF) presidential election in a move that appears to go against the official stance of the Council for East and Central African Football Associations (CECAFA) whose members are officially backing Issa Hayatou.

FIFA

Rule-makers sing praises of ‘ABBA’ format for shoot-out tie-breakers

By Andrew Warshaw

March 6 – Football’s lawmakers are considering making penalty shootouts fairer by adopting the format used in tennis tiebreakers.

Africa

Bwalya pulls out of FIFA Council race to focus on CAF exco bid

March 6 – Former Zambian FA president Kalusha Bwalya has withdrawn from the race for a place on the FIFA Council – less than two weeks before elections for African representatives.

Europe

UEFA GROW summit lays groundwork to boost Eastern Europe participation rates

March 6 – UEFA held its first regional summit under the UEFA GROW theme last week in Tbilisi, Georgia, with the aim of boosting participation in football and the growth of the game across eastern Europe.

Finance

Celtic’s gain, Liverpool’s loss. £15.7m redundancy payment takes shine off Reds’ profits

Brendan Rodgers

By David Owen

March 5 – A hefty redundancy payment for former manager Brendan Rodgers looks to have been partly responsible for the deterioration in profitability at Liverpool in the 2015-16 financial year.

Football Asia

AFC launches Dream Asia Foundation to provide social and humanitarian aid

March 5 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has officially launched its foundation which will use the game to provide aid and social development to communities across the region.