By Paul Nicholson
May 7 – Palestinian football is mourning the loss of Sa’id Yousef Odeh, a 16 year old player from the current league champions Balata FC’s youth team, who was shot dead this week by an Israeli soldier.
May 4 – The AFC completed the group stages of its The 2021 Champions League (West) last Friday with a number of last minute surprises that saw some of the region’s biggest clubs miss out on Round of 16 slots in what was an exciting end to group play.
April 30 – The Walt Disney Company will shut down Fox Sports Asia this year, bringing to an end the existence of one of the continent’s longest-standing sports broadcasters.
April 30 – Political unrest in the country has forced the Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) to pull out its two clubs – Hantharwady United FC and Shan United FC – from the 2021 AFC Cup and AFC Champions League, respectively.
April 28 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Technical Committee has proposed a series of several enhancements to its coaching activities and certification following the AFC Coaching Convention, which completed today.
April 27 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has increased distribution in Africa of its major competitions with the announcement of StarTimes as its new media partner in Sub-Saharan Africa for 2021.
April 26 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has given itself a week’s breathing space in the calendar for its AFC Cup ASEAN Zone group stages, its club competition focussed on emerging clubs.
April 22 – Japanese sports marketing giant Dentsu has renewed its deal with The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), continuing as its commercial partner for the 2021-24 rights cycle.
April 21 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has partnered with PPV and subscription-based digital broadcast platform Fanseat in eight European territories.
April 16 – The All India Football Federation (AIFF) has lodged a complaint with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) against the Iranian club Persepolis for their social media behaviour, which the Indians called “unjustified aggression”.
April 15 – The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has taken the next steps in outlining a club licensing pathway for women’s clubs, with a view to establishing a meet the requirements for participation in the AFC Women’s Champions League in 2023.
April 12 – The AFC’s men’s Champions League kicks off this week. The women’s game in Asia could see the debut of a regional Champions League as early as 2023.
April 7 – With the AFC Champions League set to start today with preliminary qualifying rounds, Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa has reaffirmed the confederation’s commitment to its competition calendar.
March 31 – Pakistan football is veering further towards an international ban after FIFA urged former federation leaders to immediately hand back control to a FIFA-installed normalisation committee.
March 30 – While UEFA and Concacaf have opened up their Qatar 2022 qualifying with a slew of matches, the AFC has pushed back the next rounds of its Asian Qualifer series to June where centralised groups will complete the preliminary round 2 of group play.