By Samindra Kunti in Kigali
March 16 – With FIFA’s wealth at an all-time high and his power base consolidated, FIFA president Gianni Infantino called on “unity” in the football family with the world federation in a “strong” and “stable” position, having “regained the trust of sponsors and institutions”.
March 16 – Speaking at the FIFA Congress in Kigali, Rwanda, FIFA’s chief of global development Arsene Wenger outlined plans for FIFA to create a youth development academy in every country of the world by 2026.
March 16 – Spain’s La Liga has thrown the book at FIFA for overhauling the international match calendar without sufficient consultation, in particular expanding the Club World Cup from seven to 32 teams from 2025.
March 16 – The umbrella body representing all of Europe’s major leagues has slammed FIFA for acting “unilaterally” in introducing a new 32-team Club World Cup and playing 104 matches – 40 more than in the past and including a new round-of-32 stage – when the World Cup is expanded to 48 nations in 2026.
By Andrew Warshaw, Chief Correspondent
March 15 – After no fewer than five failures, an unenviable record, Morocco believe they have finally found a way to stage the World Cup.
By Samindra Kunti in Kigali, Rwanda
March 15 – The World Cup will never be quite the same again. FIFA and its council decided that the global finals must be seemingly endless, the 48-team finals have now grown into a group stage of four teams and a tournament of 104 matches, eight to reach the final. In all the competition will last six, or seven days longer.
March 15 – The Confederation of Brazilian Football (CBF) president Ednaldo Rodrigues has ousted long-standing FIFA Council member Fernando Sarney (also Brazilian) as a South American representative on the world federation’s top body.
By Samindra Kunti in Kigali, Rwanda
March 14 – Norway FA president Lise Klaveness has spoken of a “realm of fear” among football FA presidents as Gianni Infantino heads for re-election and another four-year term as FIFA president in the Rwandan capital.
March 14 – On the eve of the FIFA Congress and president Gianni Infantino’s retaking of his vows in Kigali, Amnesty and a million petition signees have demanded FIFA compensate migrant workers who suffered human rights and labour abuses in Qatar.
March 14 – FIFA has kicked off a new initiative to encourage greater female participation in football esports with the launch of a women’s inclusivity programme titled FAMEHERGAME.
March 13 – This week in Kigali, Rwanda, in and around its Congress, FIFA will discuss proposals to change the opening group stages of the 2026 World Cup from three to four teams. Mario Guajardo and Alex Krumer, business and economics professors at universities in Norway are specialists in studying formats and schedules for sports competitions. They analyse some of the options available to FIFA.
March 13 – On the eve of the FIFA Congress in Rwanda where Gianni Infantino will be re-elected FIFA president, the Italian-Swiss football official has been further embarrassed following a report in Swiss Sunday newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung that Qatar spied in 2017 on Infantino and then Swiss attorney general Michael Lauber.
March 10 – The follow-up and fall-out from the FIFAgate scandal is still working its way through US courts with the former head of Fox International Channels Hernan Lopez convicted on charges that he participated in a scheme to bribe South American soccer officials.
March 10 – A majority of players from the World Cup in Qatar do not want the tournament to be staged in winter again, according to the global players’ union Fifpro.
By Paul Nicholson
March 9 – Swiss prosecutors have dropped the criminal investigation into FIFA president Gianni Infantino for the charter of a private jet between Suriname and Geneva in 2017.