By Richard van Poortvliet
April 9 – Lokomotiv Moscow have hit out at speculation from the British tabloid the Daily Mirror that their midfielder, Lassana Diarra, was about to quit the club to join the war in Syria.
By Tom Parsons
April 8 – According to a new study from GlobalWebIndex, 90% of UK Twitter users will tune in to watch the World Cup in Brazil this summer.
April 8 – Supponor, the digital replacement advertising board specialists, have appointed Roger Hall as the company’s CEO, taking over from Chris Buckley who will become a non-executive board director and will continue in a consultancy role.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 8 – Serbia’s football authorities, who have been keeping a low public profile ever since Kosovo were given permission by FIFA to play friendly matches, have given the biggest hint to date that they will challenge the breakaway territory’s new-found status.
By Alexander Krassimirov
April 8 – Bulgaria’s CSKA Sofia registered their slowest day on the stock exchange yesterday, with the club only managing to sell 3,380 shares of their newly available shares. Having started with high hopes, the sales have dwindled with concerns now that the club will miss its sales target.
April 8 – One month after former Romanian footballing icon Gheorghe Popescu was jailed for tax evasion and money laundering, prosecutors have detained the one-time head of the country’s Professional Football League Dumitru Dragomir in connection with avoiding tax linked to the sale of broadcasting rights.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 8 – The row over the name, and potentially the ownership, of English Premier League club Hull City has taken a surprise twist after a group of season ticket holders voted in favour of changing the club’s name despite a relentless campaign by grassroots fans who opposed the idea.
April 8 – Barcelona’s planned €600 million redevelopment of the iconic Nou Camp stadium will go ahead after more than 27,000 of the Spanish club’s members voted in favour.
By David Owen
April 8 – The Brazilian government has fired a numerical salvo in the direction of critics who continue to argue that hosting sporting mega-events such as the 2014 FIFA World Cup is not in the country’s best interests.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 7 – The head of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organising team says his country is “committed to positive change” despite the latest outpouring of adverse publicity over the treatment of migrant workers. Hassan Al-Thawadi admits he is “hurt” by the barrage of negative reporting, much of it emanating from the British media, and insists the World Cup will act as a catalyst for doing away with some of Qatar’s antiquated laws.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
April 7 – Marian Iancu, the former owner of Poli Timisoara, has announced plans to become a shareholder in Rapid Bucharest as the troubled football club is struggling to stay financially afloat and return to the top tier of Romania’s professional football league.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 7 – English football’s guidelines designed to prevent anyone with a suspect or unscrupulous background taking over its clubs have been plunged into farce after Italian entrepreneur Massimo Cellino was cleared to complete his takeover of Leeds United.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 7 – After just 15 months in the job, Tom Sermanni has been sacked as coach of the United States’ women’s team just a year ahead of the World Cup finals in Canada.
By Mark Baber
April 7 – Nissan confirmed it has agreed a four-year global partnership with the UEFA Champions League including the UEFA Super Cup. The agreement represents the Japanese manufacturer’s largest ever sponsorship deal and will establish Nissan as an official partner worldwide from 2014/15 to and including the 2017/18 seasons.
April 7 – CONCACAF is holding its first ever Beach Soccer coaching course starting this week in Fort Lauderdale, Miami. The course is the next extension of the confederation’s development programme led by CONCACAF’s director of development Hugo Salcedo.