April 7 – English Football League (EFL) teams will have to increase the minimum number of home-grown players in their match-day squads from next season and from 2018-19 will have to make way for at least one ‘club-developed’ player.
April 6 – Liverpool have been fined £100,000 by the Premier League and handed a two-year ban on signing academy players from other English clubs for breaking strict recruitment rules.
April 4 – The Mediterranean International Cup (MIC) kicks off this week, a friendly tournament for leading youth teams played on the Spain’s Costa Brava, this year it will feature a team from US Club Soccer’s id2 programme for the first time.
April 3 – If it is goals you want to see then the Swiss Super League is the place to watch football with an average 3.33 goals per game. The Big 5 leagues don’t fare too badly with Spain’s La Liga ranking third (2.9), the Premier League sixth (2.84) and Serie A seventh (2.82).
By Samindra Kunti
April 3 – Paris Saint-Germain won the French League Cup for the fourth consecutive season with an emphatic 4-1 victory over Monaco to alleviate some of the pressure on their coach Unai Emery.
April 3 – The statistics are pretty impressive. Unbeaten in the league domestically, a sixth consecutive title and only four points dropped.
March 29 – Video technology, which FIFA hopes will be used at next year’s World Cup, was used to correct two wrong decisions as Spain beat France 2-0 in a friendly in Paris.
March 29 – Argentina are having to cope without Lionel Messi as they try to forge a path towards next year’s World Cup.
March 27 – With the risk of a second consecutive major tournament qualification failure increasing, the Netherlands have sacked coach Danny Blind after the country crashed to a 2-0 World Cup qualifying defeat against Bulgaria.
March 21 –Premier League teams head the rankings of having the oldest players on average of all Europe’s leagues. Ten club from England’s top tier rank in the top 100 teams having on average fielded the oldest line ups in the domestic league matches played during the last six months.
March 20 – Manchester United will tour the US for two weeks as part of their pre-season preparation in July, playing five games on the east and west coasts, most likely as part of the International Champions Cup (ICC) tournament.
March 20 – He’s been the figurehead at Arsenal for a generation but Arsene Wenger has given the biggest hint yet that he will call it a day in the summer following mounting pressure over his position.
By Samindra Kunti
March 17 – Defending world champions Germany and Brazil will meet in a prestigious friendly next year for the first time since the 7-1 result in the 2014 World Cup semi-finals.
By Samindra Kunti
March 16 – The draw for the U20 2017 FIFA World Cup South Korea has paired arch rivals England and Argentina in the group stages. The participants in the finals today found out their group opponents as the 24 balls were drawn in a ceremony in Suwon.
March 15 – New season new team seems to be the club mantra for playing squads across Europe’s Big 5 leagues, but how successful is this policy in terms of achieving honours and stability? Research by the CIES Football Observatory suggests that changing your team every season will not win you prizes.