March 16 – Spain’s La Liga has thrown the book at FIFA for overhauling the international match calendar without sufficient consultation, in particular expanding the Club World Cup from seven to 32 teams from 2025.
March 16 – The umbrella body representing all of Europe’s major leagues has slammed FIFA for acting “unilaterally” in introducing a new 32-team Club World Cup and playing 104 matches – 40 more than in the past and including a new round-of-32 stage – when the World Cup is expanded to 48 nations in 2026.
March 16 – Holders Real Madrid cruised into the Champions League quarterfinals as French superstar Karim Benzema’s second-half goal secured a 1-0 win over Liverpool in their last-16 second leg tie that wrapped up a 6-2 aggregate victory.
March 16 – German champions Bayern Munich have formed a partnership with Major League Soccer champions LAFC to identify and develop young talent for their own teams but also for the international market.
March 16 – Consumer electronics brand TCL, has become an official sponsor of Conmebol’s Copa Libertadores club competition for the 2023-2026 cycle.
By Andrew Warshaw, Chief Correspondent
March 15 – After no fewer than five failures, an unenviable record, Morocco believe they have finally found a way to stage the World Cup.
By Samindra Kunti in Kigali, Rwanda
March 15 – The World Cup will never be quite the same again. FIFA and its council decided that the global finals must be seemingly endless, the 48-team finals have now grown into a group stage of four teams and a tournament of 104 matches, eight to reach the final. In all the competition will last six, or seven days longer.
March 14 – Scotiabank have renewed its long term sponsorship of Concacaf’s major events, including the title sponsorship of the Champions League which is currently at the round of 16 knock out stage for the 2023 edition and in the final year of its current format before expansion in 2024.
March 15 – The Confederation of Brazilian Football (CBF) president Ednaldo Rodrigues has ousted long-standing FIFA Council member Fernando Sarney (also Brazilian) as a South American representative on the world federation’s top body.
March 15 – Erling Haaland became the third player in Champions League history to score five goals in a single game as he led Manchester City to an 7-0 rout of RB Leipzig in the second leg of their last-16 tie on Tuesday.
By Samindra Kunti in Kigali
March 15 – Lambert Maltock from the Pacific Island Vanuatu has been re-elected for another four-year team as president of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC).
March 15 – The winners of the four editions of the Concacaf Champions League – from 2021 to 2024 – will be the confederation’s four qualifiers for the first of the expanded versions of the Club World Cup in 2025.
March 15 – A man who racially abused Premier League striker Ivan Toney has been banned from every football stadium in Britain for three years in what police say is a “landmark ruling”.
March 15 – For most football fans focus this week has been on the big European ties, like Chelsea vs Borussia Dortmund, Man City vs RB Leipzig and tonight’s Real Madrid vs Liverpool. But if you drop down a tier, there are plenty of mouth-watering matchups in both the Europa League and the Europa Conference League.
March 15 – The secretary general of the All India Football Federation (AIFF) Shaij Prabhakaran has defended his organisation’s decision to return the Santosh Trophy to India after playing the last edition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.