By Paul Nicholson
June 12 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has expressed confidence that the diplomatic crisis surrounding Qatar in the middle east will not threaten the 2022 World Cup, but that FIFA is monitoring the situation closely.
June 12 – England won their first FIFA world title for 51 years in Suwon, South Korea after their U20s overcame Venezuela in the final 1-0. Venezuela, in their first ever FIFA World Cup final, had a 75th minute penalty saved in the second half that would have levelled the game.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 9 – One month after suspending the elections of the Sudan Football Association (SFA) at the request of the incumbent SFA officals, FIFA have now threatened to throw out the African country altogether if a controversial government decree is not revoked within the next 24 hours.
June 9 – Executives of Swiss bank Julius Baer have told US prosecutors that a former employee acted alone when he allegedly helped funnel kickbacks and bribery payments to a soccer official in the Americas, according to Reuters.
By Paul Nicholson
June 8 – With the opening of the Confederations Cup tournament in Russia just nine days away, FIFA have received a letter from a Cameroon club claiming that the African team competing in Russia is not the country’s ‘legal’ representative at the tournament, and should not be recognised by the world governing body as such.
June 8 – With Confederation Cup ticket sales slow to take off, Russia’s World Cup chief Alexei Sorokin has bemoaned Germany’s decision to send a weakened squad to the traditional warmup tournament which begins on June 17.
By Samindra Kunti
June 7 – Confederations Cup host Russia has boosted security ahead of the tournament’s kick-off on June 17. Russian president Vladimir Putin has approved legislation to curb violence and hooliganism at football games after violent clashes between Russian and English fans in Marseille at Euro 2016.
Politics and sport make uneasy, if unavoidable, bedfellows. This has been underlined plenty of times in just the past few months and is now being highlighted once again by tensions in the Gulf centred on Qatar, host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
June 6 – The U20 World Cup progressed to the semi-final stages in South Korea with England, Italy, Uruguay and Venezuela ensuring that it will be a Europe vs South America final. But not before there was proof that video technology is still very much at the experimental stage and needs fine-tuning after an incident that saw Italy’s Giuseppe Pezzella shown his marching orders in controversial circumstances.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 6 – FIFA has been drawn into the escalating diplomatic crisis surrounding Qatar as speculation intensifies over the extent, if any, to which the rift with its neighbours and other Arab nations might impact on preparations to stage the 2022 World Cup.
June 6 – Former Guatemalan FA general secretary Hector Trujillo, arrested in the US while on a Disney cruise ship with his family in Florida, has pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Brooklyn federal court, New York. Trujillo was arrested in the US Department of Justice probe into corruption in football.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 5 – FIFA’s controversial decision to replace its ethics and governance chiefs has burst back into the public arena, with UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin revealing that an official letter has been sent by his organisation to world football’s governing body complaining about the lack of communication over the decision-making process.
June 2 – Football’s lawmaking body wants to keep the use of video replays to a minimum if they become standard practise for deciding contentious refereeing decisions.
By Andrew Warshaw
June 1 – In his first public comment on the issue, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin says the 2030 World Cup should go to Europe and that China should not be allowed to jump the queue and must abide by current regional hosting rules.
May 30 – FIFA is keeping faith with its much-troubled world football museum in Zurich despite a swathe of redundancies at the loss-making venue.