May 9 – Hector Trujillo, the first defendant to be sentenced in the FIFA corruption scandal, has been banned for life by FIFA’s ethics committee for taking bribes linked to marketing deals for World Cup qualifying games.
May 9 – Barcelona sponsor Rakuten have taken a leaf from the Where’s Wally books (Where’s Waldo in the US) and launched a digital #WheresBarça series on their Rakuten Arena Facebook channel.
May 9 – Just five weeks before the start of the World Cup, FIFA has given Russia a symbolic wrap over the knuckles by fining the Russian soccer federation CHF30,000 ($30,000) after fans racially abused French players during a recent game in St. Petersburg.
By David Owen
May 8 – Sunderland, condemned to play next season in the third tier of English football after consecutive relegations, managed to trim their losses in their last year as a Premier League club.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 8 – Any suggestion that next month’s 2026 World Cup ballot will be refreshingly void of politics has been wiped away in one fell swoop by South Africa’s sudden change of heart about supporting fellow Africans Morocco.
By Paul Nicholson
May 8 –The United 2026 bid chairmen have reinforced their commercial credentials for hosting FIFA’s first 48-team World Cup, predicting a record revenue of $14 billion for FIFA, a profit of $11 billion.
May 8 – Saudi Arabia has given yet another giant hint that it is backing the joint bid of United States, Canada and Mexico to stage the 2026 World Cup as the tournament increasingly becomes a political combat zone in the Gulf region.
May 8 – The 2019 Copa America in Brazil will feature Japan and Qatar but no teams from North America.
March 8 – Little more than a month before kickoff at the World Cup, where video assistant referees are being used for the first time in football’s showpiece competition, the system has come in for yet more criticism – not over the principle of implementation but over the technical process.
May 8 – Goodwill messages are continuing to pour in for Sir Alex Ferguson, one of world football’s most iconic managerial figures who is recovering in hospital after undergoing emergency surgery for a brain haemorrhage.
May 5 – Asia’s leading sides learned their Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup UAE 2019 group stage opponents on Friday, when the competition’s official draw was held at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
May 8 – Japanese sports equipment manufacturer Molten Corporation has expanded its rights portfolio in football becoming the Official Match Ball supplier for the Asian Football Confederation’s national and club events, starting with the confederation’s AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019.
By David Owen
May 8 – All cup competitions produce shock results, but the century-old Coupe de France must be in a league of its own.
May 8 – Web streaming platform mycujoo will broadcast more than 1,150 Indonesia Football Association (PSSI) league and national teams over the next three years.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 5 – The head of the umbrella body for Europe’s major leagues has stepped up the war of words over Gianni Infantino’s proposal to restructure world football by accusing the FIFA president of trying to buy votes.