March 18 – New Barcelona chief Joan Laporta has pledged to do everything in his power to convince Lionel Messi to stay after being officially sworn in as the club’s new president on Wednesday.
By Paul Nicholson
March 17 – More details are emerging of alleged financial corruption at the Sudan FA by president Dr. Kamal Shadad (pictured), as well as evidence of a complaint made to FIFA’s Ethics department back in October 2020, three months before FIFA president Gianni Infantino visited the country and reportedly instructed Shadad to support new CAF president Patrice Motsepe ahead of the African confederation’s electoral congress.
March 17 – Former UEFA president Michel Platini spent six hours in front of a Swiss prosecutor as a suspect on Monday – but today was due to appear as a witness in a separate case against his nemesis, FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
By Samindra Kunti
March 17 – Belgium’s top flight clubs have voted in support of a cross-border BeNeLiga, a league that would see Belgian clubs play their counterparts from the Dutch Eredivisie.
March 17 – Arsene Wenger, FIFA’s chief of global football development, is calling for an overhaul of the entire calendar – including holding the World Cup and Euros every two years.
March 17 – The eSports football season is hotting up with UEFA’s eEuro 2021 qualifiers having started on Monday and the eMLS Cup finals in the US starting this weekend.
March 17 – Dijon FCO have become the latest of Europe’s clubs to refuse to release their non-European nationality players for international duty, the French club announced on Tuesday.
March 17 – Manchester United are Europe’s leading club in terms of having a built a squad that will have a sustainable run at the major titles, according to a report from the CIES Football Observatory.
March 17 – Sweden have recalled their talismanic Zlatan Ibrahimovic to the national team five years after he announced his retirement.
March 17 – Maheta Molango, a former Swiss player who spent time in England’s lower leagues, is to become the first black chief executive of a leading English football body when he succeeds Gordon Taylor as chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association.
By Samindra Kunti
March 16 – New CAF president Patrice Motsepe has said he needs new secretary-general Veron Mosengo-Omba in his team “to hit the ground running”, even if the South African offered little detail on how he will tackle some of CAF’s pressing, existential problems.
March 16 – A FIFPro study of working conditions in the domestic game in 79 countries shows “less than one-third have a well-functioning system” with stable employment conditions.
March 16 – Co-hosts Argentina will kick off the 2020 Copa America in Buenos Aires on June 13, with South American Football Confederation Conmebol releasing the competition’s new calendar after both invitees Australia and Qatar withdrew because of the coronavirus pandemic.
March 16 – The coach of Dinamo Zagreb, who play Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League on Thursday, has resigned after having a prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion confirmed by Croatia’s supreme court.
March 16 – FIFA has opened disciplinary cases against three Russian footballers for suspected doping violations that happened in 2013.