March 5 – The MLS looks set to draft in replacement referees for the opening matches of its season this weekend as a wages dispute between the league and the referees union over payment looks increasingly unlikely to be resolved before kick off and the referees committed to carrying out their threat of strike action.
By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent, in Barcelona
March 5 – Hundreds of clubs responsible for developing players before they hit the big time in Europe are being unwittingly cheated out of their rightful compensation. New international transfer figures show that Europe’s clubs are all but ignoring their responsibilities to Continents like Africa and South America by paying out little more than one-fifth of required “solidarity” payments to clubs who train players during their formative years –
By Andrew Warshaw in Barcelona
March 4 – European clubs paid agents a staggering $254 million in international transfer fees over the past two years, representing 14.6% of all deals involving contracted players. That was by far the most eye-catching finding of a wide-ranging independent analysis commissioned by the European Club Association and presented at their annual assembly today.
By David Owen
March 4 – Liverpool’s exciting brand of attacking football, which has carried them to second place in the Premier League, is inspiring dreams of a return to the club’s glory days between the 1960s and 1980s. But the on-field revival has yet to be reflected in the bottom-line – at least judging by the latest published accounts.
March 4 – The painful financial turnround of Aston Villa is still on-going though the club maintain that they are on the right track and have “closed a chapter” on a period of heavy losses and are now self sufficient and within UEFA’s financial fair play regulations.
March 4 – The international friendly between Ukraine and the US looked like it had become a victim of the crisis in the country when Anatoliy Konkov, president of the Ukrainian Football Federation, said that the team would not be travelling to Cyprus for the rescheduled fixture.
March 4 – The next steps towards the creation of a long-talked about Caribbean Professional League were taken yesterday with the announcement by CONCACAF of a Task Force to look at the feasibility of a regional league.
By Alexander Krassimirov
March 4 – Bulgaria’s CSKA Sofia has officially been authorised to sell shares in the club to the public, the first club in the former communist East European Bloc to do so. The decision to allow the Initial Public Offering (IPO) was taken at a meeting of the Bulgarian Financial Supervision Commission (FSC).
“We bring you the circus, pied piper whose magic tunes greet children of all ages, from six to 60, into a tinsel and spun-candy world of reckless beauty… and high-flying stars. But behind all this, the circus is a massive machine whose very life depends on discipline and motion and speed. A mechanised army on wheels, that rolls over any obstacle in its path.” Narrator, The Greatest Show On Earth
Football today is as the circus of the 19th and early 20th Centuries,
By Andrew Warshaw
March 4 – UEFA are reportedly set to discuss the idea of a new so-called ‘Nations League’ competition, dividing its 54 members into a number of divisions offering club-style promotion and relegation.
March 4 – The Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) has acted swiftly to open an investigation into the racist abuse that 17-year-old East Stirlingshire suffered in a Division 2 match away to Peterhead last weekend. Tapping was visibly distressed and substituted to prevent having to endure any further taunts.
March 4 – Poland’s Ekstraklasa has said that its disciplinary committee will meet this week following fan violence last Sunday at the match between Legia Warsaw and Jagiellonia Bialystok. The match was abandoned after 45 minutes.
March 3 – The Poland vs Scotland international friendly this Wednesday is being streamed live on the internet rather than broadcasting via more conventional TV channels outside of host country Poland. The webcast will be free of charge on the Daily Record and Daily Mirror websites (www.dailyrecord.co.uk and www.mirror.co.uk).
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
March 3 – Budapest Honved has announced plans to build a new stadium in the Little Pest district of Hungary’s capital. The football club will receive funds for the investment under a 40 billion forint (€128.6 million) government programme to modernise and expand 27 football stadiums by 2016.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 3 – The stadium set to host the showpiece opening match of the World Cup may not be ready until less than four weeks before the start of the tournament, the latest of a series of setbacks for FIFA and Brazilian organisers. FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said that work on the stadium in Sao Paulo may now not be completed until mid-May.