April 1 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino addressed the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group on the final day of its video conferencing summit outlining FIFA’s battle troops in the area and offering the co-operation of the organisation.
April 1 – FIFA has announced the nine host cities for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, with Sydney and Stadium Australia staging the final. Auckland in New Zealand will host the tournament’s curtain raiser.
By Paul Nicholson
April 1 – With fans locked out and club revenues locked down, social media has become increasingly important to the commercial infrastructure of clubs, according to KPMG Football Benchmark analysis.
By James Dostoyevsky
Football and leaks are a bit like cows and milk. One without the other appears to be quite impossible. That’s certainly true for cows. Without udders, there is no milk. And if the cow’s udder is not milked, the cow painfully dies. OK, that’s a worst-case scenario but does happen.
April 1 – North Macedonia stunned Germany and Joachim Low 2-1 with an 85th minute winner from Eljif Elmas to record their most famous international victory, leaving Die Mannschaft’s World Cup qualification campaign in disarray.
April 1 – Real Madrid’s German international Toni Kroos has become the latest high-profile player to criticise 2022 World Cup host nation Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers – but stopped short of calling for a boycott of the tournament.
April 1 – South Africa have sacked their coach Molefi Ntseki after Bafana Bafana failed to qualify for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations.
April 1 – He might not be making the shortlists of the end of year awards these days but Lionel Messi is still the best player in Europe, according to a just released statistical analysis of performance data from the first third of 2021.
April 1 – Spain’s World Cup qualifier against Kosovo on Wednesday may have gone ahead as planned but it was always likely to be embroiled in controversy.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 31 – A decision on the future of the Champions League post-2024 has been delayed until next month with UEFA seemingly at loggerheads with Europe’s elite clubs and leagues over the precise nature of the deal.
March 31 – African football has been hit by yet another Covid-related controversy after Benin refused to play a decisive African Cup of Nations qualifying game in Sierra Leone after disputing that five of its players had tested positive just before kick-off.
March 31 – Pakistan football is veering further towards an international ban after FIFA urged former federation leaders to immediately hand back control to a FIFA-installed normalisation committee.
By Samindra Kunti in Leuven
March 31 – Belgium national team coach Roberto Martinez has voiced his support to expand national team squads to 26, 27 players for Euro 2020, calling it “a necessity”.
March 31 – Swedish football that has been rocked by match-fixing scandal and saw criminal charges issued against five individuals last December, has moved to beef up its integrity operations via an increased betting monitoring deal with Sportradar.
March 31 – The world’s number one team Belgium wore t-shirts on Tuesday in support of migrant workers involved in building 2022 World Cup stadiums in Qatar, following other European sides in protesting for improved human rights in the Gulf state.
