By David Owen
March 7 – The sale of the Boleyn Ground and of Dimitri Payet, the club’s one-time talisman, have helped West Ham to become the latest Premier League outfit to report a thumping profit.
March 7 – Manchester City have signed former Premier League naming rights partner Barclays as the Club’s Official Banking & Credit Card Tour Partner in a regional deal. The Barclays logo will feature on the back of the team’s shirt during pre-season matches in the US this summer.
March 7 – International football investors into the UK aren’t just looking for top tier Premier League deals. Two Canadian investors, Dr. Jason Neale and R. Stewart Thompson, have acquired 50% of League 1 Peterborough United for an undisclosed sum.
March 6 – CONCACAF has unveiled its first ranking of national teams in the North, Central America and Caribbean region. Mexico are ranked top, the USA, despite not qualifying for Russia 2018, are second, and Costa Rica third.
March 6 – Just when English football authorities appeared to have learned from the lessons of the past in terms of embarrassing gaffes, so another one has hit the headlines, this time involving Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn.
March 6 – Italian football is breaking with tradition and going down the English road of playing over Christmas and New Year.
March 6 – Now that FIFA have changed the rules on what the two bidders for the 2026 World Cup can and can’t do to promote their credentials, Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) President Fouzi Lekjaa has wasted no time rallying support from within his own confederation.
March 6 – Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has accepted a Football Association charge over “wearing a political message” during matches, specifically a yellow ribbon in support of jailed pro-independence politicians in his native Catalonia.
March 3 – Tributes will be paid before Champions League and Europa League games this week in honour of Davide Astori, the Fiorentina defender and former Italian international who died tragically at the weekend aged 31.
March 6 – CONCACAF has unveiled its first ranking of national teams in the North, Central America and Caribbean region. Mexico are ranked top, the USA, despite not qualifying for Russia 2018, are second, and Costa Rica third.
March 6 – The first ever Women’s Football Symposium for the whole of African football has opened in Marrakech designed to chart a new course for the development of the women’s game.
March 6 – Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez has signed up to the ‘Athens Principle for the right to play sport’. Pérez was on hand for a signing ceremony that also saw the Euroleague (basketball) president Jordi Bertomeu sign the accord.
March 6 – The latest CIES Football Observatory data report looks at the clubs with the best ratios between shots taken and conceded from inside the box during the current domestic league season.
March 5 – Just days after the head of Asian football, Shaikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa, called on FIFA to lift its ban on Iraq being allowed to host competitive international matches, two Asian Champions League games have been postponed until April in the hope that FIFA heeds the request.
March 5 – The whole of Italy and the footballing world beyond has registered its collective shock and disbelief after the sudden death overnight on Saturday of Fiorentina captain and Italian international defender Davide Astori at just 31 years of age.