By Paul Nicholson
May 11 – Manchester City has taken a deep media step into the opportunities of Virtual Reality with a test of last weekend’s game against Arsenal that was broadcast to a select group of fans in London, New York and Melbourne.
May 11 – Premier League Watford has agreed a three-season sponsorship with Divisa Capital who will become the club’s new Official Foreign Exchange Partner. No fugure was announced for the deal.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 10 – A group of anti-Israeli activists is urging FIFA not to just bury the plight of Palestinian footballers in the occupied territories when it holds its annual congress in Mexico on Friday.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 10 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has expressed his sadness at Michel Platini failing to overturn his ban for breaching FIFA’s ethics code – hardly surprising given the process by which Infantino landed the top job in world football instead of his former boss.
By Mark Baber
May 10 – Schalke 04 and Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom have agreed to an extension of their shirt sponsorship deal, which had been due to expire in 2017, until 30 June 2022 in a deal reported to be worth at least €120 million.
May 10 – Romania’s interior ministry has suspended the licence of a private ambulance company that transported Dinamo Bucharest and Cameroon midfielder Patrick Ekeng to hospital after he collapsed during a match last Friday and died shortly afterwards.
May 10 – The last of the football officials still held in Zurich after the May 2015 raids by Swiss police and US Department of Justice officials, has finally had his extradition to the US finalised.
By Mark Baber
May 10 – The Chris Giwa faction of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), acting in accordance with a widely held interpretation of a recent court ruling, attempted a take-over of the NFF Glass House HQ on Friday, before being asked to help police with their enquiries and then pledging to return on Monday.
By Samindra Kunti
May 10 – Qatar’s Belgian investment at Eupen has come good with the club’s ascendency to Belgium’s top flight, but only after a farcical kerfuffle of Belgian bureaucracy.
May 9 – Tottenham Hotspur’s Moussa Dembélé and Dele Alli come top and fourth in the CIES Football Observatory ranking of ‘box-to-box’ midfielders in Europe’s Big 5 league. The Bayern double act of Arturo Vidal and Xabi Alonso topped the rankings defensive midfielders.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 8 – European football is looking for a new leader after Michel Platini announced he was stepping down as UEFA president, albeit under protest, after losing his fight to clear his name for breaching FIFA’s ethics rules.
By Matt Scott
May 9 – The Greek Football Cup final scheduled for Saturday was postponed by the government amid safety fears for the match.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 9 – Representatives of Kuwaiti clubs are planning to be in Mexico City later this week to drum up support against FIFA’s decision to ban the Gulf state over government interference in sport.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 9 – Football’s world players’ union FIFPro has raised concern about the level of first-aid treatment for footballers in Romania following the tragic death of Dinamo Bucharest and Cameroon midfielder Patrick Ekeng on Friday.
May 9 – Manchester City, who have recently taken on board a $400 million investment from Chinese investors in their City Football Group ownership group, have added two new Chinese partners in advance of their July pre-season trip to the country where they will play Borussia Dortmund and local rivals Manchester United.