By Paul Nicholson
June 4 – The bid by Spain and Portugal to host the 2030 World Cup will get an official stamp tonight before a friendly match between the two countries at the Wanda Metropolitano stadium in Madrid.
June 1 – World Cup participants in 2022 will be allowed to use five substitutes per match after football’s rule-making body IFAB extended the right until the end of next year.
May 24 – The Nordic membership of FIFA has stepped up pressure on the world governing body to improve workers’ rights in Qatar, the 2022 World Cup hosts.
By Paul Nicholson
May 14 – With FIFA’s World Cup 2026 venue inspection team in full flow in terms of briefing, meeting and assessing potential city hosts, Baltimore on the East coast is one of 17 city hopefuls jostling for a final 10 host slot.
May 12 – Following human rights protests by international players from Belgium, Denmark, Germany and Norway and letters from the Danish and Norwegian FA’s FIFA and World Cup 2022 organisers Qatar have begun a series of meetings with member associations.
May 7 – A ban on several stadia across the African continent has led to the widely anticipated postponement of several World Cup qualifiers that were scheduled for June.
April 28 – Algeria and Egypt’s pairing in Group D on Wednesday headlined the draw for the FIFA Arab Cup, a tournament that will serve as the official dress rehearsal in December for 2022 World Cup hosts Qatar.
April 28 – Following in the footsteps of the Danish and Swedish football federations, the Norwegian FA (NFF) has become the third national football governing body to demand answers from FIFA over working conditions of migrant workers in Qatar, the host for the 2022 World Cup.
April 27 – The Danish FA (DBU) has called for a better legal human rights framework in Qatar, the 2022 World Cup host, and demanded that FIFA to investigate the “alleged death toll among Qatar’s migrant workers”.
April 19 – With the 2022 World Cup approaching rapidly and the Covid-19 pandemic still raging around the world, hosts Qatar are seeking coronavirus jabs for all visitors to next year’s global finals.
By Paul Nicholson
April 16 – The embattled Trinidad and Tobago FA, currently ruled by a FIFA Normalisation Committee, could face the embarrassment of losing points from its recent World Cup qualifiers for playing an ineligible player.
By Paul Nicholson
April 14 – Iran have made another trip to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), this time to protest the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) decision to award hosting rights for the centralised preliminary rounds of World Cup qualifiers to Bahrain.
April 1 – North Macedonia stunned Germany and Joachim Low 2-1 with an 85th minute winner from Eljif Elmas to record their most famous international victory, leaving Die Mannschaft’s World Cup qualification campaign in disarray.
April 1 – Real Madrid’s German international Toni Kroos has become the latest high-profile player to criticise 2022 World Cup host nation Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers – but stopped short of calling for a boycott of the tournament.
March 30 – Poland captain and world player of the year Robert Lewandowski will miss Wednesday’s World Cup qualifier with England due to knee injury, a potentially damaging blow to his country’s hopes of automatic qualification.