By Andrew Warshaw in London
September 21 – The English may have voted for his only rival but in his first overseas assignment since taking over from Michel Platini as UEFA president last week, protocol was duly observed when Alexsander Ceferin today attended the ceremonial unveiling of the official logo for the semifinals and finals of Euro 2020 being staged at Wembley.
September 21 – There was a big increase in twitter activity this week with Premier League clubs making nearly 1,400 more tweets taking the weekly total up from 3,650 last week to 5,090 this week. This produced more new followers for the week, up 17,000 from 217,000 to 234,000.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 21 – The head of Iceland’s football association (KSI) has denounced the makers of FIFA 17 for showing them no respect by freezing the country out of the long-awaited video game.
September 21 – Online bookmaker Betway has added two more sponsorships to its football portfolio, expanding into the Belgian market with deals with top club RSC Anderlecht as well as the Belgian FA and Pro League for the Croky Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 20 – Gianni Infantino’s regime has come under renewed criticism over the already infamous ruling allowing members of FIFA’s new-look Council, supposedly a key element of FIFA’s reform process, to hire and fire independent governance officials.
September 20 – When professional football teams emerge from the tunnel, usually the mascots are young kids who dream of being on the same pitch as their heroes. But 11-time Swedish champions AIK went for the opposite age group before last weekend’s home game against against Gefle IF, handing the honour to 12 senior citizens aged between 81 and 96.
September 20 – Serie A club Internazionale have named Hong Kong luxury car maker Infiniti as its Official Car for the 2016/17 season.
September 20 – Women’s football in Scotland has been given a boost with the addition of energy provider SSE as the first major sponsor of Scottish Women’s Football (SWF) in the country.
September 19 – Brazil kept up their Olympic momentum with Gold and Bronze medals in the Rio Paralympic football tournaments. Their success in the five-a-side final at the Olympic Tennis Centre was their fourth successive win.
September 19 – Premier League attendances for Round 5 slipped across the league with the overall percentage of stadia filled dropping to 93.93%, the lowest for the season so far.
September 19 – Real Madrid vs Sporting was the most exciting match of last week’s Champions League fixtures, almost twice as exciting as the second placed match – Legia Warsaw vs Dortmund – where the fans perhaps became a little overheated as Dortmund (with a strong Polish support in Germany), hammered the Polish champions 6-0.
By David Owen
September 17 – PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have stepped into the hot-seat vacated by KPMG as statutory auditors of FIFA. The world football body announced that the Bureau of the FIFA Council had appointed PwC Switzerland to the role.
By Andrew Warshaw
September 16 – Gianni Infantino, back in the comfort of his own patch after attending the UEFA presidential election in Athens where Aleksander Ceferin was elected in succession to Michel Platini, has dismissed as “imagination and lies” any idea that he lobbied behind the scenes in favour of the previously little-known Slovenian who critics claim Infantino was keen to control.
By Paul Nicholson
September 16 – While UEFA’s executive committee were yesterday finding out that it was too late to change the new structure agreed for Champions League qualification that favours Europe’s big four leagues and their biggest clubs, a high level delegation from one of the biggest of those clubs, FC Barcelona, was meeting FIFA president Gianni Infantino at FIFA headquarters in Zurich.
September 16 – Gillette has upgraded its regional sponsorship of FC Barcelona to become a global partner in a new three-year deal.