February 13 – La Liga and Serie A are in battle for the services of Javier Tebas, the longstanding and mercurial Spanish league president. The Italian league has made an approach to lure him away from Spain.
February 13 – In a rare intervention, UEFA have stepped in to order referees to provide greater protection to Europe’s top players during the knockout stages of the Champions League.
February 13 – FIFA is facing calls from human rights organisations to scrap Chechnya as a World Cup base for Egypt this summer.
February 13 – Champions League sponsor Mastercard, who last week extended its 24-year partnership for another three-year cycle to 2021, has called up Pele to activate the brand sponsorship in advance of the last 16 knockout rounds.
February 13 – No other club in history has spent as much as Manchester City to assemble a playing squad. At €878 million Man City have spent €73 million more than Paris St Germain and €131 million more than neighbours Man Utd, though they are having a Red Devil of a time under big spender Jose Mourinho to close that gap.
February 12 – Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros does not mince his worlds when it comes to issues of sports integrity. More needs to be done, it needs to be done now and these are non-negotiable conditions. For de Medeiros, tackling matchfixing is very firmly in the middle of that mix of integrity issues globally that have to be addressed.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 12 – The way FIFA did business in order to secure a top Chinese sponsor for the World Cup has been seriously called into question by the man who claims he brokered the deal but was cut out from receiving commission in return.
February 12 – Portugal claimed their maiden UEFA Futsal Championship title by defeating Spain 3-2 in extra time in Slovenia. In Asia, Iran took the highest honours, beating Japan 4-0.
By Paul Nicholson
February 12 – It took three rounds of voting before Carlos Cordeiro emerged triumphant in the ballot for the US Soccer Federation presidency. Cordeiro, who has been the US federation’s vice president for the last two years and an independent board member for nine years, fought off eight challengers for the post in what proved to be a canny campaign that appealed to the broader base of US soccer’s community.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 12 – Former FIFA vice president Chung Mong-joon, for years one of world football’s most powerful administrators, has been cleared to work again after partially winning his appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport against his five-year ban for failing to cooperate with ethics investigators.
By Paul Nicholson
February 12 – Sunil Gulati may now have left the presidency of the US Soccer Federation but he leaves behind one huge legacy issue in the shape of training compensation for youth players and whether the US is going to abide by FIFA rules and conventions or go it alone and continue to refuse the training payment solidarity principles.
February 12 – South Korean pharmaceuticals company, Cho-A Pharm, has renewed its sponsorship of Manchester United as the club’s Official Pharmaceuticals partner in South Korea and Vietnam.
February 12 – Tottenham Hotspur and South Korea forward Son Heung-min was presented with the Asian Football Confederation’s Asian International Player of the Year award at Wembley Stadium on Saturday.
By Mark Baber
February 9 – The Chinese company Yadea, a market leader in the production of electric-powered motorcycles, bicycles and scooters, has signed on as a Regional Supporter of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 9 – The boss of Norwegian football has allegedly been reported to FIFA’s ethics committee for remarks he made about Russia being thrown out because of the ongoing doping scandal.