By Andrew Warshaw
March 8 – With only a month to go before Europe elects its representatives on FIFA’s ruling Council, there is still no word as to whether under-fire Russian World Cup supremo Vitaly Mutko will be eligible to join the all-powerful, decision-making body.
By Samindra Kunti
March 7 – Senegal and South Africa have completed the line-up of the U20 2017 FIFA World Cup in South Korea after advancing to the semi-finals of the U20 CAF African Cup of Nations.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 6 – Moya Dodd, one of the first women to serve on FIFA’s ‘old’ executive committee as a co-opted member and a forceful campaigner for gender equality, is two months away from finding out whether she will still have a major role to play at FIFA’s top table.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 6 – Football’s lawmakers are considering making penalty shootouts fairer by adopting the format used in tennis tiebreakers.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 5 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has re-iterated that there is a realistic chance video replays will be used at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the most ground-breaking change in years in FIFA’s showpiece event.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 3 – Buffeted by persistent reports of internal unrest, FIFA has put to work the independent external specialists engaged late last year to mediate in staff disputes.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 3 – A majority of fans are still worried about corruption in football despite Gianni Infantino’s pledge when he took over as FIFA president a year ago that the crisis was over.
By Paul Nicholson
March 2 – Argentinian football is in a mess and it doesn’t look to be clearing up despite the efforts of a FIFA normalisation committee parachuted in last July to take over the running of the federation and attempt to bring order to the chaos.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 2 – Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the FIFA-appointed official who led the inspection team that evaluated the credentials of all 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding candidates, is going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in a last-ditch attempt to clear his name and overturn a three-year ban for seeking unpaid intern work in Qatar for relatives.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 1 – Asian football’s governing body has urged FIFA to urgently resolve the festering dispute in the Middle East amid speculation that a call for Israel to be thrown out of world football will be revived in May.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 1 – Amos Adamu (pictured), one of Africa’s most notorious footballing figures, has been banned for a second time by FIFA’s Ethics Committee for unethical conduct, almost certainly bringing the curtain down on a career that has long been shrouded in controversy.
March 1 – German football supremos Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Reinhard Grindel have given a firm thumbs down to Gianni Infantino’s first year as FIFA president.
March 1 – Morocco is reportedly considering a new strategy to challenge north America for the 2026 World Cup, almost certainly the first edition to involve 48 teams.
By Paul Nicholson
February 28 – FIFA’s firing of all its development staff across Africa and the closing of offices in four countries was met with a barrage of criticism within the region last December. Now the governing body of world football is facing a series of legal challenges from former employees to whom it has allegedly refused to make severance payments in accordance with national law.
By Andrew Warshaw
February 28 – I’ll see you in court if necessary. That is the defiant message issued to FIFA by former South African Football Association (SAFA) CEO Leslie Sedibe (pictured) who has served world football’s governing body with a claim for $5 million for defamation of character after being banned for five years over the 2010 matchfixing scandal along with three other SAFA officials.