UEFA’s initial boycott was in response to FIFA’s plans to sell stakes in its commercial and event operations, including the World Cups?
“UEFA has doubled down on its threat of European member associations boycotting future men’s and women’s World Cups. This comes after Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, received “full support” from the senior leadership in attendance at a crisis meeting in Morocco on Wednesday. UEFA’s initial threat to boycott future FIFA tournaments last week was in response to Infantino’s failed FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal that would have seen FIFA make stakes in world soccer’s commercial and event operations, including the World Cups and Club World Cups, available for private investment. …”
NYT/ATH
UEFA doubles down on World Cup boycott threat despite FIFA U-turn, Gianni Infantino apology
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“Gianni Infantino held talks about rebranding the ill-fated European breakaway competition the ‘Fifa Super League’, with negotiations going as far as the term sheet for an agreement that would have changed the face of European football. The term sheet, whose full contents can be revealed for the first time, is dated October 2020 and proposes renaming any new competition under Fifa’s branding. It outlines the extent to which Infantino’s administration were implicated in a scheme that caused widespread revulsion among fans and excluded clubs in April 2021. It also reveals that 
Lise Klaveness (left) and Laura McAllister were instrumental in stopping Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell off stakes in FIFA competitions 
“There is no time to dance around the subject. 
“FIFA has insisted ‘nobody is selling football’ after criticism of its decision to launch a consultation on selling stakes in a World Cup commercial entity to private investors. The world governing body of football stopped short of saying it would be withdrawing the plan and instead reaffirmed its commitment to press ahead with the consultation period. It comes as the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) joined the European confederation UEFA and Concacaf, the confederation of North, Central America and the Caribbean, in rejecting FIFA’s notion of selling stakes in the World Cup. 
“Fifa’s justification for its proposed plans to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors is about giving the 211 member associations more money to develop football. It’s safe to say that in the past, funds have done more developing in some places than in others, with millions either going missing or not being used for their original purpose and 
“He is very online but does not like the media. He flies all over the world in a fancy private plane provided by Qatar. He presides over a large organisation, with committees and a big rulebook, but makes all the key decisions and only tells a few people what he is doing. He loves shiny things and fireworks. He wants to do more business with the Kushner family and believes he is underpaid. His preferred strategy is to double down, flood the zone and ask for more — it is an approach that has worked well for him so far. Some people think he is amazing, some do not. Can you tell who it is yet? No, not him, the other one. Yes! It’s FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is back in the news again after a break of… 24 hours? 
“FIFA’s 2026 World Cup is already surrounded by controversy before kickoff. From sky-high ticket prices and visa concerns to security fears, extreme heat, and fan backlash, critics say the tournament is becoming harder and more expensive for supporters around the world. With the biggest World Cup in history set across the USA, Canada, and Mexico, pressure on FIFA is growing fast.”
Bournemouth’s matchday revenue is limited by the size of their ground
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“Domestic leagues would be limited to staging one game a season in foreign countries under 
“IT SEEMS bizarre that, despite the multitude of missiles falling on Tehran, the counter-strikes across the Middle East and the punchy rhetoric of the United States, FIFA are even considering to run the World Cup this summer. Let’s remember that the US is a host nation in this World Cup and host means ‘welcoming’ your visitors. And yet, Haiti, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Iran have either had partial or full travel bans slapped on them by the Trump administration. Furthermore, Mexico (co-hosts) and Colombia have been ‘warned’ by the US. Yes, Mexico, who helped the US win hosting rights for this tournament, have been warned. If you add it all up, among the 48 nations taking part, there are quite a few who have either been insulted, bullied, penalised (by tariff bingo) or threatened in some way by the US in the past 18 months. Why, oh why, would anyone want to travel to the States to take part in the competition in 2026? …”
“After years of planning, the World Cup is now just 100 days away. This summer’s tournament in North America will almost certainly be the most-viewed sports event ever, watched by millions (or more likely billions) of fans across the world. But it also offers a huge opportunity to attract a whole new audience, particularly across the United States, where soccer has long been on the rise but still does not dominate the sporting landscape as it does in so many other countries. This will be a World Cup watched by diehards and those who have never engaged with the sport before. With that in mind, we have compiled this article as a guide to everything you could possibly want to know about the tournament, from the most basic questions for those who have never watched the sport to far more intricate details about how teams play, the politics of this tournament, the ticketing situation and much more. With 100 days until the tournament, our reporters have answered 100 questions. …”
“When UEFA changed the format of the Champions League, it was for nights like this. The Swiss model, now more famous than Swiss Cottage station on the London Tube network but not yet as famous as Swiss cheese, replaced the old eight groups of four model (less catchy) in 2024. The final day was pretty good last year, with 64 goals in the 18 games, but no big teams dropped out and the big will-they-won’t-they? of the night saw Paris Saint-Germain stroll past Stuttgart 4-1 to avoid an early elimination (wonder what happened to them). …”
“World Cup 2026, previously just a dot on the horizon, starts to come into full view this week. With qualification now wrapped up (well, mostly — more on that shortly), the draw for the tournament takes place in Washington, D.C. on Friday. In the lead-up to that event, we answer some of the big questions you may have about that draw and the World Cup more generally. Let’s start with the basics, and then we’ll delve a bit deeper. …”
“The next men’s FIFA World Cup is now 200 days away and 42 nations — including its co-hosts the United States, Canada and Mexico — have secured their places in the expanded 48-team competition. Seventy-five per cent of matches will be played in the U.S. across 11 cities. Mexico will host the opening matchday in Mexico City and Guadalajara, but the involvement of both it and Canada, in terms of venues anyway, will cease after the round of 16, with all games from the quarter-finals onwards to be played in the States, including the final at MetLife Stadium in the state of New Jersey, a few miles west of New York City. …”
“When you have spent 17 years stuck behind the Electrical Contractors’ Association, the Edinburgh College of Art, and the European Cockpit Association in Google’s search results for the acronym ‘ECA’, it probably is time for a makeover. So, when the hundreds of delegates arrived at the European Club Association’s 32nd general assembly in Rome this month, they actually found themselves at the first general assembly of European Football Clubs, which is a good name for a lobby group that represents European football clubs. …”
“The league phase of the UEFA Champions League begins soon in what is the 70th year since the competition first took place. The first game took place on September 4, 1955 between Sporting Clube de Portugal and Partizan Belgrade, a 3-3 draw in Lisbon and the first British club to participate, Hibernian, made their bow on September 14 with a trip to Rot-Weiss Essen. … Meanwhile, Hibernian, who had finished fifth in the Scottish League in 1954-55, were confirmed as Scotland’s representative. Some sceptics wondered if Hibs were equipped to play in the competition, but Partizan had finished at the back end of their domestic top six. …”
Crystal Palace fans protested against Uefa after being demoted from the Europa League
“At Trump Tower, the new home of FIFA in Manhattan, Gianni Infantino hailed the Club World Cup a ‘huge, huge, huge success’ on Saturday. The president of soccer’s world governing body later posted on Instagram that the tournament had ‘taken over the United States and united people in joy’. FIFA has been on a victory lap since Chelsea’s 3-0 victory against Paris Saint-Germain in Sunday’s final in front of an 81,118 crowd at MetLife Stadium, a few miles to the west in New Jersey. … Dynamic pricing and empty seats. FIFA adopted a dynamic pricing approach to tickets, where prices fluctuate according to supply and demand. For high-interest sports and music events, this can lead to prices skyrocketing in value but during the Club World Cup, where not a single game was a complete sellout, these costs often tumbled instead due to a lack of demand. … Similar deals emerged with different universities during the tournament as FIFA scrambled to avoid tens of thousands of empty seats becoming a regular occurrence. The group-stage games recorded an average of 35,000 spectators, but the size of the venues chosen — largely NFL stadiums with capacities of more than 60,000 — left big gaps in the stands. The dynamic-pricing market made for some absurd fluctuations. Standard admission pricing for the semi-final between Chelsea and Brazil’s Fluminense at MetLife was 
Empty seats were an issue at Club World Cup games
“Arsene Wenger had a lot to get off his chest in the autumn of 2015. His Arsenal side were in danger of exiting the Champions League at the group stages and their 2-1 loss away to Dinamo Zagreb had become an acute source of irritation. Not because Arsenal had stumbled against their weakest opponents, but because the Croatian side had triumphed with a player — Arijan Ademi — who had returned a positive drugs test after playing the full 90 minutes. Ademi would eventually be given a four-year suspension (later reduced to two on appeal) after traces of the banned steroid stanozolol were found in a routine urine sample, but Wenger bristled at Zagreb facing no disciplinary sanctions from UEFA, European football’s governing body. ‘That means you basically accept doping,’ he said. …”
“Boca Juniors storm beaches. They plant their flags and wade through water. ‘The biggest popular movement on the planet’ is how they define themselves — and when they move, they move. They occupied Copacabana before the 2023 Copa Libertadores final against Fluminense. A sunburnt kid leant out of the crowd, his hair wet and eyes clear. His father had sold his motorbike so they could be there. The boy had also given up his PlayStation to pay for the journey to Rio de Janeiro. They didn’t have match tickets but they didn’t care because, as he said, ‘Look around you! Look at this! This is Boca! Come on, Boca!’ A club for the people, made great by their people. …”
“European members of the FIFA council staged a dramatic walkout at the world governing body’s congress following the late arrival of President Gianni Infantino. The eight UEFA members of the FIFA council and several European delegates did not return to Thursday’s conference centre in Paraguay, including UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin and the English Football Association (FA) president Debbie Hewitt. The exit followed a three-hour delay to the congress, because FIFA president Infantino was late arriving for his own event on Thursday morning, having prioritised meetings with United States president Donald Trump in Doha and Qatar this week. This included rescheduling the FIFA council, which should have been in person in Paraguay on Tuesday, but was instead held virtually last Friday. …”
“Tonight’s trip to Chelsea, in all probability, will be the 16th and final European game of Legia Warsaw’s season. A 3-0 first-leg deficit in the Conference League quarter-finals has left a mountain to climb, and the adventures of Poland’s biggest club will likely end at Stamford Bridge. UEFA is too diplomatic to publicly celebrate any club’s exit, but parting with the perennial bad boys at least rids their disciplinary department of a long, nagging headache. …”
Israel football team supporter at the 2023 Euros.
“The sight of a goalkeeper gathering a simple shot, collapsing to the ground and taking an age to part with the ball is an infuriating one if your team are trailing. If your team are leading, it is a beautiful form of expressive art. The room for such theatrics is set to be squeezed, however, as the International Football Association Board (IFAB) has acted on what it sees as the rising trend of goalkeepers getting away with time-wasting. 
“Last season, the
“One of the most successful and lucrative commercial rights partnerships in football is ending. On Tuesday, it was announced that 
“… Hello! 
“Gedling Town Football Club was a 
“Maybe we should have known right from the start that this was going to take a while. Panathinaikos’ Argentinian midfielder Daniel Mancini stepped up to take the first penalty of their shootout against Ajax, the Greek side having scored a late equaliser to force the 
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“The showpiece final of this summer’s 
“A late winner from England substitute Ollie Watkins against Netherlands put Gareth Southgate’s team into the final of Euro 2024, where they will face Spain. The 
“The 
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“Watching 
“By this point, it’s time to accept that 
“Under Luis de la Fuente, 
“Despite having an array of attacking talent at his disposal, not one of Deschamps’ players has scored a goal from open play during Euro 2024. And yet his team are through to a semi-final against 
“It was a surprise to hear 
Scissors Kick 