By Paul Nicholson
March 8 – The growth and interest in Major League Soccer in the US continued to hit new highs with record viewing numbers. and big crowds for the opening weekend of the season. This week the league renewed official airline sponsor Etihad Airways.
March 8 – Danny Jordaan’s loss has suddenly become Almamy Kabele Camara’s gain ahead of the most feverish African regional elections in decades.
March 8 – Silvio Berlusconi has said that he would “not hesitate” to keep AC Milan if Chinese buyers Sino-Europe Sports failed to complete on the acquisition. But if you had already accepted a €200 million non-refundable deposit you would likely say the same.
March 8 – London Mayor Sadiq Khan has given approval to Chelsea’s new £500 million stadium. The club’s redevelopment proposal had been agreed by the Hammersmith and Fulham local council in January,
March 8 – Signs that the focus of Chinese football money is not solely on acquiring European clubs and sports assets have been seen in Tianjin where Tianjin TEDA have announced new sponsorship deals with TEDA Holding and the Elion Group for the 2017 Chinese Super League season.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 7 – Danny Jordaan (pictured), the public face of the 2010 South Africa World Cup, has dramatically pulled out of the race to gain a place on FIFA’s ruling Council, plunging this month’s African regional elections into chaos and confusion.
March 7 – The alignment and re-alignment of African federations behind either incumbent president Issa Hayatou or challenger Ahmad Ahmad in the election for president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) is a seemingly ever-changing landscape of contradictions.
March 7 – The English Football Association has agreed a set of reform proposals which chairman Greg Clarke believes represent a “once-in-a-lifetime” chance to change how the national game is run.
March 7 – It was not going to be a second week of double top for Manchester United but it was a double top for the city. United continued their long run leading the weekly Twitter growth in followers tables, but plummeted to 13th place in the most tweets for the week table with less than half the number of tweets of the previous EFL Cup winning week. Instead Man City took over the weekly lead in the tweets ranking.
March 7 – Having complained about the ever-inflating cost of broadcast rights to football, BT Sport has stumped up a huge £1.18 billion for UEFA Champions League rights that will see the world’s leading club competition exclusively on the pay broadcaster in the UK for the three seasons from 2018-19 to 2020-21.
March 7 – Two Manchester City players – Kevin de Bruyne and Nicolas Otamendi – lead the way in an analysis of Europe’s top players so far this season across six technical performance categories.
March 7 – The former president of El Salvador’s football federation (FESFUT), who is wanted in the United States for alleged corruption, has been sentenced to eight years in jail for labour fraud.
By Samindra Kunti
March 7 – Senegal and South Africa have completed the line-up of the U20 2017 FIFA World Cup in South Korea after advancing to the semi-finals of the U20 CAF African Cup of Nations.
March 7 – A Russian politician has proposed a somewhat unorthodox solution to the country’s hooliganism problem ahead of next year’s World Cup: legalise it and turn it into a spectator sport.
By David Owen
March 6 – Swansea City have become the latest Premier League outfit to report a downturn in financial performance. The South Wales club, making good headway on the pitch under new manager Paul Clement, have posted a £14.6 million pre-tax loss for the year to July 31.