By David Owen
May 19 – Hamburg, a confirmed runner in the race for the 2024 Olympics, may be about to suffer an immense blow to its sporting prestige. With just one game to go, the city’s premier football club – Hamburger Sport-Verein – is in serious peril of relegation from Germany’s Bundesliga for the first time in its history.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 19 – With a raft of clubs struggling to comply, UEFA have agreed to relax the rules on financial fair play that were introduced in 2011 to curb overspending, but which have led to the widely anticipated threat of legal challenges.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 19 – Qatari authorities, under fresh pressure to improve their human rights record ahead of the 2022 World Cup, have hit back at BBC claims that a reporting team was arrested and detained for trying to film conditions at migrant workers’ housing despite being on an officially sanctioned visit to the country.
May 19 – A Malaysian supporters group is calling for a boycott of two lucrative close-season games against Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, saying the fixtures are fruitless and serve no other purpose than to fill the coffers of the national federation.
By Mark Baber
May 19 – A row has broken out in Nigeria over what is being termed the “slave contract” between Nike and the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) over the sponsorship of national team shirts. The argument sees the NFF marketing department pitted against the Pinnick-led hierarchy, with neither party keen to discuss a major underlying issue – sports brands’ reluctance to sponsor a federation in which homophobia poses significant reputational risks.
When Newcastle last won the English top-division title, they really did do it in black and white. It was 88 years ago. It is 60 years now since Newcastle last won the FA Cup and 16 since they lost the second of two consecutive finals. In short, theirs is not a tradition of trophy-laden triumph.
By Samindra Kunti
May 19 – In the vicinity of the iconic Arc de Triomphe in Paris’s affluent eighth district, football fans milled about the entrance of the ritzy Hotel du Collectioneur under a slight drizzle late in March. They were looking to get a glimpse of Brazil’s football stars. Chelsea’s Oscar briefly sauntered through the plush lobby, a little casual in his flip-flops. Heads turned and outside pandemonium ensued.
May 18 – Argentine giants Boca Juniors have been thrown out of the Copa Libertadores, South America’s equivalent of the Champions League, after its fans sprayed players from rivals River Plate with an irritant substance during their last-16 tie last week.
By David Owen
May 18 – Top football clubs face a common problem: as their global brands become more powerful, their fan-bases become more remote and harder to engage with – and to monetise. Digital technology seems an obvious route to addressing this issue, and this week Real Madrid, which has been notably quick off the mark in the use of social media, will launch its latest initative for connecting with supporters worldwide.
May 18 – Six months after federation president Carlo Tavecchio was banned for his notorious “banana eaters” comments when referring to African footballers, Italian football has been plunged into fresh embarrassment with another less than savoury verbal faux pas.
By Andrew Warshaw
May 18 – Amid reports that a BBC correspondent has become the latest western journalist to be detained in Qatar despite being invited as part of an official tour, fresh calls were made in London today for FIFA’s World Cup sponsors to use their commercial clout to radically improve conditions for thousands of migrant workers employed on construction sites.
May 18 – Russian stadium construction for 2018 is ahead of schedule and the stadia will be delivered in advance of deadlines, according to officials in Nizhniy Novgorod and Kaliningrad. The two cities are both building new stadiums for the World Cup.
By Mark Baber
May 18 – Cairo’s Court of Urgent Matters on Saturday reportedly declared football supporter’s “ultra” groups to be “terrorists” and banned them, in a ruling which came at the behest of Mourtada Mansour, chairman of the Zamalek club.
By Alexander Krassimirov
May 18 – Turkish international and current captain of Turkey’s Fenerbahce Emre Belozoglu (pictured) has been attacked by Besiktas supporters while traveling on a ferry.
By Paul Nicholson
May 18 – Manchester United had a bumper week in terms of new Twitter followers in the Insideworldfootball Twitter ranking. Averaging gains of about 19,000 each week over their nearest rivals Chelsea and Arsenal, last week Man Utd added almost 50,000 new followers, double that of the London duo.