By Andrew Warshaw
April 9 – Paris St Germain are making a major push into the Chinese market both to enhance their own ambitions to become one of European football’s superpowers and also to take on the Premier League. The French club has just signed a new sponsorship deal with Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and also planning to play at least one game in China during the close season.
By Paul Nicholson
April 9 – The almost-traditional and recurring Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) financial crisis that occurs every major international championship when it comes to paying officials and players, may have been resolved, at least in part, in advance of the Brazil World Cup.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 9 – Italian entrepreneur Massimo Cellino has completed his takeover of iconic English club Leeds United, according to his lawyers, in a deal worth more than £30 million – much of it used to pay off the Championship club’s debts.
April 9 – Germany’s new Development Minister is the latest politician to call on FIFA to strip Qatar of hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup, the first member of Angela Merkel’s cabinet to do so.
April 9 – Alleged Singaporean match fixer Eric Ding Si Yang, accused of bribing three Lebanese match officials a year ago in return for rigging games, has chosen not to testify at his long-running corruption trial.
By Richard van Poortvliet
April 9 – Lokomotiv Moscow have hit out at speculation from the British tabloid the Daily Mirror that their midfielder, Lassana Diarra, was about to quit the club to join the war in Syria.
By Tom Parsons
April 8 – According to a new study from GlobalWebIndex, 90% of UK Twitter users will tune in to watch the World Cup in Brazil this summer.
April 8 – Supponor, the digital replacement advertising board specialists, have appointed Roger Hall as the company’s CEO, taking over from Chris Buckley who will become a non-executive board director and will continue in a consultancy role.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 8 – Serbia’s football authorities, who have been keeping a low public profile ever since Kosovo were given permission by FIFA to play friendly matches, have given the biggest hint to date that they will challenge the breakaway territory’s new-found status.
By Alexander Krassimirov
April 8 – Bulgaria’s CSKA Sofia registered their slowest day on the stock exchange yesterday, with the club only managing to sell 3,380 shares of their newly available shares. Having started with high hopes, the sales have dwindled with concerns now that the club will miss its sales target.
April 8 – One month after former Romanian footballing icon Gheorghe Popescu was jailed for tax evasion and money laundering, prosecutors have detained the one-time head of the country’s Professional Football League Dumitru Dragomir in connection with avoiding tax linked to the sale of broadcasting rights.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 8 – The row over the name, and potentially the ownership, of English Premier League club Hull City has taken a surprise twist after a group of season ticket holders voted in favour of changing the club’s name despite a relentless campaign by grassroots fans who opposed the idea.
April 8 – Barcelona’s planned €600 million redevelopment of the iconic Nou Camp stadium will go ahead after more than 27,000 of the Spanish club’s members voted in favour.
By David Owen
April 8 – The Brazilian government has fired a numerical salvo in the direction of critics who continue to argue that hosting sporting mega-events such as the 2014 FIFA World Cup is not in the country’s best interests.
By Andrew Warshaw
April 7 – The head of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organising team says his country is “committed to positive change” despite the latest outpouring of adverse publicity over the treatment of migrant workers. Hassan Al-Thawadi admits he is “hurt” by the barrage of negative reporting, much of it emanating from the British media, and insists the World Cup will act as a catalyst for doing away with some of Qatar’s antiquated laws.