By Paul Nicholson
January 12 – City Football Group, owner of 12 clubs including Premier League Manchester City, has expanded its network and deal-making strategy with the addition of Bolivia’s Club Bolivar as its first ‘Partner Club’.
January 12 – UEFA has issued new anti-doping regulations including greater flexibility in the sanctioning process for violations and new provisions to protect whistle-blowers, the European governing body announced on Tuesday.
January 12 – With battle lines drawn, Joan Laporta (pictured) looks set to become Barcelona president for the second time though his main rival says he would be a throwback to the past rather than a voice for the future.
January 12 – Manchester United will take on arch-rivals Liverpool in a mouth-watering heavyweight showdown in the fourth round of the FA Cup later this month that will be keenly followed by their legions of fans across the globe.
January 12 – The Premier League has confirmed 36 positive coronavirus cases were recorded in the latest week of testing, a slight drop from the season-high of 40 positives which were revealed in the previous week’s results – the first in which players and staff at all 20 clubs were tested twice a week.
January 12 – Dutch cable operator Ziggo has added another year to its shirt sponsorship of Ajax with an option to extend until 2025.
By Paul Nicholson
January 11 – The scale of Covid’s decimation of the football industry’s revenue infrastructure is highlighted again in KPMG Football Benchmark’s annual review of Europe’s champion clubs.
January 11 – Following a string of postponed games and scores of players being forced to self-isolate, the English Premier League has threatened disciplinary action against anyone who breaches strict Covid-19 protocols.
January 11 – The beleaguered Trinidad and Tobago FA (TTFA), under the control of a FIFA normalisation committee but still unashamedly refusing to meet its debts, in particular to former employees and coaches sacked under the ousted regime of William Wallace, could turn to the House of Football as the solution to its deepening money problems.
January 11 – Schalke 04 have avoided great embarrassment. On Saturday, the club from Gelsenkirchen finally picked up three points after 30 Bundesliga games without a win, leaving the all-time German winless record in the hands of Tasmania Berlin.
January 11 – French FA president Noël Le Graët (pictured), who came under pressure for prematurely closing down last season’s domestic league campaign despite other European countries managing to complete theirs, has not yet declared whether he is running again when his term ends in March.
January 11 – FIFA President Gianni Infantino has been denounced by Amnesty International for appearing in a promotional video for the Saudi Arabian government in which he said the country has made important changes.
January 11 – Tottenham Hotspur and Carlos Vinicius’ 13-minute hat-trick ended Marine FC’s fairy tale run in the FA Cup in a 5-0 demolition of the non-league club, who sit 161 places below the Londoners in the English football pyramid.
January 11 – The Sports Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) has released the webinar schedule for its first SIGA Youth Forum, January 27-29.
By Samindra Kunti
January 8 – Ahmad Ahmad has been banned from standing for the Confederation of African football (CAF) presidential election, the African governing body confirmed on Thursday. The candidatures of both South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe and Mauritanian FA president Ahmed Yahya will undergo additional eligibility checks before they are cleared to run in the election.