By Paul Nicholson
June 5 – The Iraq Football Association, under the control of a FIFA normalisation committee, has called an end to the current Iraqi Premier League season, saying that it needed “preserve the readiness” of national team players for the World Cup qualifiers.
June 5 – The Qatar 2022 organisers have announced the Education City Stadium in Doha as the third World Cup stadium to be completed.
June 5 – Atletico Madrid’s international forward Diego Costa, one of the most irascible players in top-flight football, has been sentenced to a six-month prison term, which he will not have to serve, and been fined €543,208 after being found guilty of tax fraud.
June 5 – The controversial boss of Swiss club FC Sion is seeking to halt the resumption of the Swiss league by requesting an official investigation into the Swiss Football League by the country’s Competition Commission (COMCO).
June 5 – Basketball star Kevin Durant has become the latest celebrity to acquire a stake in an MLS franchise, having reportedly invested in the Philadelphia Union.
June 5 – A Covid-related row has broken out in Italian football after Atalanta coach Gian Piero Gasperini admitted to having coronavirus symptoms when his team played Valencia in the Champions League in March.
June 5 – Premier League teams are adopting the five substitutes rule when fixtures resume later this month after approving the new guidelines.
June 5 – The Sports Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) has opened up applications to anyone aged 18-25 to become a member of its newly launched Youth Council for Sport Integrity.
By David Owen
June 4 – Spurs have become the first football club to tap the UK Government coronavirus support measure known as the Covid Corporate Financing Facility (CCFF).
By Paul Nicholson and Andrew Warshaw
June 4 – The Asian Football Confederation says it is “committed” to completing this year’s regional Champions League after the latest round of talks with member federations.
June 4 – Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas (pictured), who has been at the forefront of opposition to scrapping the rest of the French season, has stepped up his efforts to have the campaign re-instated despite a government mandate to ban all top sport until September.
June 4 – On June 17 UEFA’s executive committee will decide the fate of both this season’s Europa League and Champions League, but reports suggest that Portugal and Germany are the early front runners to host the final stages of the Champions League.
June 4 – Major League Soccer (MLS) and its players’ union (MLSPA) have reached agreement on a re-negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreement that will enable the season to restart with a new competition format to be played in Orlando, Florida.
June 4 – In small and slow steps football is returning to a semblance of normality. On Wednesday, the Hungarian Cup Final between Budapest Honved and Mezokovesd was played in front of the biggest crowd in Europe since the outbreak of the coronavirus, but a minority of supporters failed to respect social distancing rules.
June 4 – It is going from bad to worse for Austria’s LASK Linz who are seeing what would be only their second ever domestic league title slip away.