By Osasu Obayiuwana
February 4 – Eight months have passed, since the 2019 CAF Champions League final, the most controversial in the history of African football, took place, as the pairings for the quarter-finals for this year’s edition are about to be made.
February 3 – Spanish giant FC Barcelona is revamping its digital platforms which it sees as an under-exploited revenue stream. A new digital plan will see the launch of an OTT service and wider integration of digital technologies from e-commerce to ticket sales and integration with its new global membership programme ‘Culers’.
February 4 – Parma’s Dejan Kulusevski (pictured on loan from Juventus) tops the table of most playing time for big-5 league players born in the 2000s. The young forward has played in 95% of Parma’s games and is followed in the table by another Italian club player, midfielder Sandro Tonali (Brescia).
February 4 – Turkish club Trabzonspor have filed a criminal complaint after former Nigerian international captain John Obi Mikel was the target of racist abuse from Fenerbahce supporters on Sunday.
February 4 – Two fans of English top-flight club West Ham have been arrested after the latest incident of alleged homophobic gestures in English football, this time directed towards Brighton supporters last weekend.
February 4 – Two South Korean fans who sued match organisers after Cristiano Ronaldo failed to play in a friendly during Juventus’s pre-season tour last year are entitled to compensation, a court has ruled .
February 4 – Neymar is out injured again. So what, you might ask. Except that a rib injury which will keep out of action against Nantes in the French league tonight was made worse by partying at a nightclub to celebrate his 28th birthday.
February 4 – The Argentine Football Association (AFA) has signed up fast food giant McDonald’s in a national team sponsorship that will activate around the AFA’s digital platforms.
By Osasu Obayiuwana
February 3 – The powers and influence of the 23-man executive committee of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), to decide the affairs of the organisation and the continental game, are to be whittled down, if it is acceptable to CAF’s General Assembly.
February 3 – Premier League clubs spent close to £25 million on the final day of the January transfer window, pushing their overall spending to a total of £230 million, £50 million more than last year but still well short of the £430 million record of 2018.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 3 – She came, she saw, but what did she actually manage to conquer? FIFA secretary-general Fatma Samoura has ended her six-month secondment to clean up the administration of the scandal-plagued African Football Confederation (CAF) but the jury will be out for some time in terms what she achieved.
February 3 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has called an emergency meeting of all its stakeholders – member associations, leagues, clubs and commercial parties – participating in the East Zone of the AFC Champions League to discuss the spread of the coronavirus.
February 3 – FIFA’s eNations Cup 2020 will be hosted in Copenhagen by the Danish Football Association (DBU) May 22-24. It will be the first time the finals have been played in front of a live audience.
February 3 – Chaos reigned once again in the African Champions League when Sudanese riot police had to take over the centre of the pitch to protect players and officials and control fans during a match between Sudanese team Al Hilal Omdurman and Egypt’s Al Ahly in Group C of the competition at the Al-Jawhara Stadium in Khartoum.
February 3 – Olympique Marseille are starring down the barrel of financial disaster again after the accounts of holding company Eric Soccer revealed a deficit of €91.5 million for the 2018-2019 season, surpassing the mammoth €78.5 million loss of the 2017-2018 financial year.