By Andrew Warshaw
March 31 – FIFA’s hugely expensive 22-month internal investigation into the bribery and corruption that brought the organisation to its knees has been officially wound up, with mountains of potentially incriminating evidence passed to Swiss law enforcement authorities.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 31 – In a last-ditch effort to force UEFA into a change of heart over its controversial changes to the Champions League, Europe’s top leagues have scheduled an extraordinary meeting for June but have stopped short of saying what action, if any, will be taken if their calls for a greater say in the decision-making process are not met.
March 31 – Europe’s professional clubs have moved into the e-sports market with many signing professional e-sport FIFA players to represent the clubs in domestic and international gaming competitions. An analysis by KPMG’s Football Benchmark team maps the clubs that have embraced the fast-growing and trending sector.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 31 – After much anticipation, FIFA has announced its proposed allocation of slots for the first expanded 48-team World Cup in 2026 – except for two places which are to be decided by a new six-team inter-zonal playoff round.
By Paul Nicholson
March 31 – The United Soccer League (USL) is expanding again, this time with the launch of a Third Division men’s professional national league that will start play in 2019.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 31 – For years they were the two most powerful officials in world football, sometimes at loggerheads, sometimes insisting they were the best of allies.
March 31 – Former FIFA vice-president Chung Mong-joon, who at one stage was hoping to take over from Sepp Blatter, is going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to try and get his five-year ban from all football-related activities overturned.
By Paul Nicholson
March 31 – Elkhan Mammadov is a different kind of ‘beast from the east’. Like many of the current crop of administrators taking leading positions at the top tables of world football, he comes without a history of old-school alliances. Relatively unknown outside his home country of Azerbaijan, he comes with a skillset that is in line with modern business practices and the new cadre of football administrators sweeping across the world game.
March 30 – Spanish telecom giant Telefónica is partnering with Real Madrid as both brands seek to maximise their leading positions at home and abroad.
March 30 – The Association of European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL) has brokered a deal between eight of its leagues and three commercial partners – Perform Group, Sportradar and Genius Sports – to collect and supply official data to the betting industry.
March 30 – Video assistant referees could change the face of football in as many as 25 areas of the game, according to the technical director of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) the game’s law-making body.
March 30 – After a leaderless period of turmoil, Argentine football now has a new president after Claudio Tapia was elected unopposed and made reducing Lionel Messi’s four-match ban his first priority.
March 29 – Vauxhall is to end its sponsorship deals with the four British nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland at the end of the 2018 World Cup, when its current agreements expire.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 29 – The new head of African football has thrown his weight behind a possible bid by Morocco to stage the 2026 World Cup, potentially a significant irritant to north America which is regarded by many as a shoo-in to host the event.
March 29 – A group of Swiss parliamentarians has written to FIFA urging it to resolve football’s Middle East impasse by banning the six Israeli clubs playing in the occupied territories.