By Andrew Warshaw
February 28 – Just days before the first UEFA-imposed deadline for national associations to confirm their interest, Nordic federations have ditched plans to bid for the 2024 European Championship – leaving Germany and Turkey to fight it out.
February 24 – UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin has once again dismissed the idea of a breakaway European super league, repeatedly mooted as an inevitability despite UEFA’s decision to reform the Champions league in favour of the continent’s top four domestic leagues.
By Samindra Kunti
February 24 – On a historic night for Belgian football, AA Gent, KRC Genk and RSC Anderlecht all progressed from the Europa League’s round of 32. In the round of 16 Manchester United, the biggest team left in the competition, will face Russia’s FC Rostov.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 23 – When the previously little-known Aleksander Ceferin gained a stunning victory to win the presidency of UEFA last September, his landslide 42-13 triumph over Michael van Praag was a giant statement for the smaller European federations like his own Slovenia.
February 23 – Jersey’s appeal against UEFA’s rejection of their membership bid will be heard by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on June 28.
February 21 – The Brazilian at the centre of the latest disgraceful outburst of racist abuse in Serbian football says he wants to forget the incident as soon as possible despite being in floods of tears at the final whistle – pictures that were flashed across the world.
February 20 – No sooner had Serbia’s top flight resumed at the weekend after a two-month winter break than the same familiar racism-fuelled trouble re-occurred, with Rad Belgrade’s match against visiting city rivals Partizan marred by a player brawl.
By Samindra Kunti
February 20 – RSC Anderlecht have announced that the club will not move to the Eurostadium, dealing another blow to the construction of the EURO 2020 venue.
February 20 – Any doubts that the FA cup, the world’s oldest and most prestigious domestic knockout competition, has lost its romance were swept away at the weekend when Lincoln City – four divisions below the Premier League – became the first non-league side in 103 years to reach the quarter-finals.
February 17 – Following tentative research published in the UK earlier this week which suggested that repeated headers during a player’s career may be linked to brain damage, UEFA has commissioned its own research project examining links between dementia and playing football.
February 17 – Clubs in English football’s second-tier Championship clubs have agreed “in principle” to use goalline technology from the start of next season.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 16 – One of the longest-serving figures among European football’s old guard elite is exploiting an historic loophole in UEFA’s age restrictions to try and retain a place at the organisation’s top table.
By David Owen
February 16 – The Football Association, which is facing mounting pressure to reform from British MPs, has released figures detailing cost savings made as a result of an organisational restructure announced in July 2015.
By Paul Nicholson
February 15 – Evangelos Marinakis is a big guy. He is physically big, he has a big shipping empire, he has the biggest football club in Greece, Olympiacos, and he is the big player in the social fabric of his home town Piraeus, a district of Athens, Greece.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 15 – Two weeks before the deadline for initial expressions of interest, Turkey has announced it is bidding for Euro 2024, hoping to be fourth time lucky.