By Andrew Warshaw
March 31 – After much anticipation, FIFA has announced its proposed allocation of slots for the first expanded 48-team World Cup in 2026 – except for two places which are to be decided by a new six-team inter-zonal playoff round.
By Paul Nicholson
March 31 – The United Soccer League (USL) is expanding again, this time with the launch of a Third Division men’s professional national league that will start play in 2019.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 31 – For years they were the two most powerful officials in world football, sometimes at loggerheads, sometimes insisting they were the best of allies.
March 31 – Former FIFA vice-president Chung Mong-joon, who at one stage was hoping to take over from Sepp Blatter, is going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to try and get his five-year ban from all football-related activities overturned.
Whether we like it or not, Britain is leaving the EU, leading to all manner of ramifications, complications and consequences. But what effect will it have on the country’s place in European football?
By Andrew Warshaw
March 30 – Europe’s top leagues meet Friday to decide how to avoid a showdown with UEFA and the Continent’s clubs after being left behind over changes to the Champions League and other reforms.
By Paul Nicholson
March 31 – Elkhan Mammadov is a different kind of ‘beast from the east’. Like many of the current crop of administrators taking leading positions at the top tables of world football, he comes without a history of old-school alliances. Relatively unknown outside his home country of Azerbaijan, he comes with a skillset that is in line with modern business practices and the new cadre of football administrators sweeping across the world game.
March 30 – Spanish telecom giant Telefónica is partnering with Real Madrid as both brands seek to maximise their leading positions at home and abroad.
By David Owen
March 30 – Tottenham Hotspur, the North London club leading the pursuit of Chelsea at the top of the Premier League, have given details of another highly satisfactory financial performance.
March 30 – The Association of European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL) has brokered a deal between eight of its leagues and three commercial partners – Perform Group, Sportradar and Genius Sports – to collect and supply official data to the betting industry.
March 30 – Video assistant referees could change the face of football in as many as 25 areas of the game, according to the technical director of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) the game’s law-making body.
March 30 – After a leaderless period of turmoil, Argentine football now has a new president after Claudio Tapia was elected unopposed and made reducing Lionel Messi’s four-match ban his first priority.
March 29 – Vauxhall is to end its sponsorship deals with the four British nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland at the end of the 2018 World Cup, when its current agreements expire.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 29 – The new head of African football has thrown his weight behind a possible bid by Morocco to stage the 2026 World Cup, potentially a significant irritant to north America which is regarded by many as a shoo-in to host the event.
March 29 – A group of Swiss parliamentarians has written to FIFA urging it to resolve football’s Middle East impasse by banning the six Israeli clubs playing in the occupied territories.