By Andrew Warshaw
April 3 – German Football Association president Reinhard Grindel, one of European football’s most influential figures who continually banged the drum for greater transparency and accountability, has himself been forced to resign after being embroiled in a domestic scandal.
April 3 – UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has urged referees to be brave enough to halt matches in order to help stamp out an alarming resurgence of racism from fans. Ceferin opened a UEFA conference on discrimination on Tuesday, organised in conjunction with England’s Football Association, and believes it is time officials took the plunge and abided by UEFA protocol.
March 28 – FIFA’s chief legal officer Emilio Garcia Silvero and former CAS Deputy General Secretary William Sternheimer have joined the speaker line-up for the Sports Law at the Crossroads conference in Madrid, May 10-11.
March 28 – Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) which represents players in England and Wales, is to step down after 38 years amid heightened criticism of his reported £2 million annual salary, believed to be one of the highest in the world for a trade union official.
By Paul Nicholson in New York
March 28 – The SIGA (Sports Integrity Global Alliance) meetings closed in New York with a meeting of the integrity group’s general assembly and a commitment to grow the association in the US.
By Paul Nicholson in New York
March 26 – FIFA beware, former investigators and prosecutors who worked on the US Department of Justice indictments in 2015 say that the investigation is still on-going and there will likely be more indictments on top of the 42 already charged.
March 27 – Russia’s former international striker Pavel Pogrebnyak has been fined 250,000 rubles (£2,938/$3880) for saying it was “laughable” to have black players representing the national team.
March 27 – Irish fans disrupted a Euro 2020 qualifier against Georgia on Tuesday by throwing tennis balls onto the pitch in protest at John Delaney’s continued role as a senior executive in the Football Association of Ireland (FAI).
By Paul Nicholson in New York
March 26 – Sport integrity group SIGA has appointed the British Standards Institute (BSI) to develop and operate its ratings system that will measure how fit-for-purpose sport governing are. It is the next major step in the organisation’s crusade to bring better governance to sport and provide real tools for governing bodies to battle corruption and raise integrity standards.
March 26 – Another unsavoury incident of racism at an international fixture, another Balkan country responsible.
March 25 – Football Association of Ireland (FAI) chief executive John Delaney has stepped aside from the role just 10 days before he was due to appear before a parliamentary committee to be questioned over a €100,000 loan he provided to his federation two years ago.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 22 – Rui Pinto, the man behind a string of incriminating leaks that shook the footballing world, has been controversially extradited from Hungary, where he had been living, to his native Portugal.
March 22 – New FIFA regulations surrounding player transfers and their status, will be the focus of the Sports Law at the Crossroads conference, Madrid 10-11 May. A second day will examine the growth of esports and the game-changing regulatory issues it is presenting.
March 21 – An English women’s footballer has decided to retire after being banned for five games for racial abuse.
March 20 – The United Soccer League, operator of professional tier two and three leagues in the US, has boosted its protection against match-fixing and betting related-fraud via a deal with integrity specialists Sportradar.