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For three years, from 2015 to 2018, a team of journalists working in Algeria for BBC News Arabic gathered information and testimonies from a number of sources, including agents, match-fixers, match officials, ex-players and club chairmen.

Boca Juniors 1-3 River Plate
The mayhem of Argentina could not be copied. All the stereotypes of European elite football were reinforced: the match organization, the fan zones, the security operation, the influx of football tourists, the sanitised stadium and the antiseptic atmosphere that accompanies major finals.

On the pitch, Manchester City impressed everybody last season. Now let’s take a look behind the scenes – on the men who own the club.

Every vote counts when the heads of the world’s football associations gather to decide who will host the 2026 World Cup. Even the votes that shouldn’t?

The rival World Cup 2026 bids of Morocco and the US, Mexico and Canada met the presidents of the Nordic football associations to present their cases. The press was mostly interested in Donald Trump’s twitter habits.

According to FIFA’s guidelines for the World Cup bidding process, bidding nations must provide safety and security information, such as crime statistics, in Section 14 of their bid books. Such information is absent from the bid book of the United bid of the US, Mexico and Canada.

Two senior Fifa officials, Marco Villiger and Tomaz Vesel, filed the false complaint against secretary general Fatma Samoura, a complaint that was dismissed by the ethics committee. The consequences could be severe, as FIFA’s code of ethics clearly states that filing false accusations is a serious violation.

FIFA has sent a five-man task force to inspect the bidders for the 2026 World Cup. They claim it’s to ensure a ‘fair and transparent’ process. But can we trust the members of this task force to be unbiased?

UEFA last year ruled CSKA-Sofia to be ineligible to play in UEFA competitions until 2019/20. Quietly UEFA has changed their own decision and will allow CSKA-Sofia to compete in Europe next season if they qualify. UEFA says their U-turn is based on new evidence, but will not disclose what this so-called evidence is.

Upon arrival at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport little spoke of the U-17 World Cup, but across the Indian capital, a vast megapolis of centralized political power, historical monuments and poisonous smog one single billboard popped up in every metro station, screaming in Hindi ‘Football’s Power of Youth,’ with Prime Minister Narendra Modi striking a stern pose, arms folded. The sexagenarian was about to do a player presentation and say ‘I am David Luiz and I am a central defender.’

FIFA will cooperate with the Council of Europe on issues like human rights and good governance. We asked the secretary general, Thorbjørn Jagland, what the purpose of this partnership is about.