By Paul Nicholson
April 13 – Manchester United pay their players on average 281 times more than their fans earn, the third highest differential in Europe, only beaten by Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid who pay their players 350 times what the average fan earns.
April 13 – Former Ivory Coast, Chelsea and most recently Montreal Impact forward Didier Drogba has become the biggest name to join US challenger league the USL, the second tier of professional football in the US.
April 13 – Tottenham Hotspur who are redeveloping their White Hart Lane stadium as the centrepiece of a regeneration of their local area, have launched a new programme with bookmakers William Hill aimed at helping young people in Haringey into employment.
By Samindra Kunti in Dortmund
April 12 – It should have been a 90-minute football fest of supremely gifted talents, coached by Thomas Tuchel and Leonardo Jardim, two of the best in the business.
By Paul Nicholson and Andrew Warshaw
April 12 – The United States, Mexico and Canada have somewhat cheekily asked FIFA to fast-track their bid to stage the 2026 World Cup without a proper competitive process.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 12 – The football world has reacted with shock and dismay after Tuesday’s Champions League tie between Borussia Dortmund and Monaco had to be postponed because of three explosions close to the Dortmund team bus.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 12 – Whilst the process for hosting the 2026 World Cup is perhaps the standout item on the agenda for next month’s FIFA Congress (see separate article), the future of FIFA’s ethics committee and the crisis involving Palestine and Israel are also up for potentially contentious discussion in Bahrain.
April 12 – The new president of African football, Ahmad Ahmad, has hinted that he is open to the idea of changing the dates of the African Cup of Nations, the confederation’s flagship event.
April 12 – After struggling to find fresh commercial sponsors in the wake of the corruption probe that brought the organisation to its knees, Fifa is set to seal a major partnership with Qatar Airways within weeks, agency reports have quoted unnamed sources as saying.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 11 – An expanded tournament to 48 teams, Gianni Infantino’s encouragement for a return to co-hosting and the re-establishment of rotation. It has all played very nicely into the hands of CONCACAF whose three biggest members have, as expected, now officially announced their intention to bid for the 2026 World Cup.
April 11 – Manchester United broke their own impressive Twitter record this week putting on a massive 95,700 new followers, a weekly record for this season. It was also another good week for Chelsea who continued their weekly twitter dominance of Arsenal with their own season record 67.200 new followers.
April 11 – Iraq’s Radhi Shenaishil has become the third coaching casualty of Asian World Cup qualifying Group B after being sacked late on Monday.
April 11 – The issue of competitive balance in European competition was brought into political focus recently with UEFA’s new Champions League qualification criteria which sees four teams from the top four nations automatically qualify for the group stages. Not only does this reduce the opportunity of other teams from smaller leagues to challenge but it will likely concentrate more of the revenue towards the biggest teams.
April 11 – Just days after being given the dreaded vote of confidence, Edgardo Bauza has been sacked as Argentina coach, with the team outside the automatic qualifying places for next year’s World Cup.
April 11 – The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) have finally released a statement upholding FIFA’s recruitment ban on Belgian club RFC Seraing for breaching third-party ownership rules – but has confirmed is has reduced the sanction from four transfer windows to three.