By Andrew Warshaw
March 19 – Despite reservations far and wide, as anticipated FIFA’s ruling Council has rubber-stamped the decision earlier this month by football’s lawmakers to approve video assistant referees for the World Cup and beyond.
March 16 – FIFA’s ruling Council are expected to rubber-stamp video assistant referees being used at this summer’s World Cup at their meeting in Bogota today despite lingering opposition from within the game.
March 16 – The German Football Association has parted ways with national women’s team coach Steffi Jones, following a disappointing SheBelieves Cup in the United States. Horst Hrubesch (pictured) will succeed her on an interim basis.
March 15 – Mauricio Pellegrino, the ninth manager to be sacked in the Premier League this season, is to be replaced at Southampton by Mark Hughes, the eighth Premier League manager to be sacked this term.
March 15 – Training your own talent is no guarantee of success at club level though the stats suggest that it gives a slight advantage. Players who spent at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21 in the club accounted for almost 25% of champion winning team squads, compared to only about 20% for all clubs surveyed.
March 7 – Money, it seems, has once again has failed to buy success for Paris St Germain who continue to wait to land Europe’s biggest club prize.
March 6 – The latest CIES Football Observatory data report looks at the clubs with the best ratios between shots taken and conceded from inside the box during the current domestic league season.
March 5 – After a detailed study and a two-year experiment, football’s lawmakers have officially approved the use of a fourth substitute being used in extra time, starting with the World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw in Zurich
March 4 – So now it’s official. No turning back. But are there still more questions than answers? As anticipated, video assistant referees are set to be used at this year’s World Cup in Russia after football’s lawmakers, the International FA Board (IFAB), voted to roll out the technology when they met at FIFA headquarters in Zurich on Saturday.
March 2 – Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter has appealed to football’s lawmakers not to give the green light to video assistant referees being allowed at the World Cup in Russia this summer.
March 1 – Any slight chance the world’s most expensive player had of making his club’s most important game of the season has been ruled out with the news that Neymar will have surgery after suffering a fractured metatarsal and sprained ankle.
February 28 – The world’s most expensive player has suffered a damaging injury at the worst possible time. Neymar’s fractured metatarsal and sprained ankle is expected to keep him out of action for at least six weeks meaning he will miss Paris St Germain’s all-important upcoming Champions League last-16 second leg tie against Real Madrid.
February 28 – He may have successfully campaigned for the European Club Association, which he headed for nine years, to have a voice on UEFA’s decision-making executive committee but Karl-Heinz Rummenigge is annoyed at the decision not to use video assistance in next year’s Champions League.
February 28 – Internazionale have opened their eighth academy outside of Italy, the latest being in Beirut, Lebanon. Inter is working in partnership with Water Resources LTD Company and Sportomondo on the project in Lebanon.
February 27 – Chelsea’s Eden Hazard is the world’s leading dribbler of the ball so far this season, topping Neymar and Lionel Messi in an analysis of Europe’s Big 5 league players.