January 25 – The head of Morocco’s 2026 World Cup campaign has re-iterated that the country will be able to meet all FIFA’s requirements, not least when it comes to infrastructure.
January 25 – A report by Russia’s state-run newspaper Pravda has accused neighbours Ukraine of trying to disrupt next summer’s World Cup.
January 24 – Russia’s Federal Agency for Tourism has named and shamed a list of hotels that have jacked up their prices by massive amounts for the World Cup.
By Paul Nicholson
January 23 – The United 2026 World Cup bid heavyweights are on the road, locked and loaded with persuasive arguments and reasoning for why they are the only choice for hosting 2026. Absent were expensive gifts, brown paper bags of cash or even watches (not even Mickey Mouse ones) to shower their voting constituency with. For the faithful, FIFA 2.0 is a serious commitment.
January 23 – The global leg of the FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour sponsored by Coca-Cola kicked off with an official launch ceremony in London on Monday and plans to hit 91 cities across 51 countries and six continents.
January 16 – Football fans around the world remain keen on attending the World Cup, the quadrennial high mass of the global game. In all, 3,141,163 tickets have been requested in the second sales phase, which runs until the end of January.
By David Owen
January 15 – The draw has been completed for the 2018 World Football Cup, to be staged in London between May 31 and June 9.
January 5 – Vitaly Mutko’s humiliating decision to step down as head of Russia’s World Cup organising committee in the wake of the ongoing doping scandal is now official.
January 3 – Grigory Rodchenkov, the whistle-blower whose revelations led to the explosive doping scandal that rocked Russian sport, is now free to talk to FIFA about the extent to which football was involved according to agency reports.
January 2 – Russian World Cup fans could be offered Aeroflot flight tickets for just 5 rubles (9 cents) between cities where Russia’s team is playing. Russian president Vladimir Putin has been reported as saying it is a “good idea.”
By Andrew Warshaw
December 27 – Under-fire Russian football supremo Vitaly Mutko has now stepped down as chief organiser of the 2018 World Cup having two days ago relinquished his role as president of the Russian Football Union (RFU) after mounting global criticism of his alleged involvement in the Russian doping scandal that has seen the country banned from Olympic sport.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 22 – Under-fire Russian World Cup supremo Vitaly Mutko is on the verge of being ousted as head of the country’s football federation following the doping scandal that rocked world sport and heaped pressure on him to stand down.
December 21 – Head of the Moscow Department of Sport and Tourism Nikolai Gulyaev said on Tuesday that the whole infrastructure of Moscow is almost ready for World Cup 2018.
December 7 – It has been a slow burn but ticket sales have suddenly ignited for the Russia 2018 World Cup following the Final Draw last Friday. 1,318,109 tickets were requested in the first 24 hours from when the sales window opened December 6.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 4 – The joke buzzing around social media after last Friday’s evenly balanced World Cup draw was that there IS actually a Group of Death: Netherlands, Italy, Chile and the United States.