Dutch and Serbian quintet for final matches

The 2017/18 season is slowly ending, and probably the best two referees were appointed for the finals. We are left with 4 clubs, whose 2 are from the same town, from 3 different countries and 2 various judges. Only two games are left for Europa and Champions league competitions, which came to the very end, and yesterday UEFA has announced 'men in blue' for those closing plays of the season.
In Lyon, France on 16 May Bjorn Kuipers from Netherlands is going to lead Europa league final between Olympique Marseille and Atletico Madrid. The 45 year old will have great help from 4 of his compatriots: Sander van Roekel and Erwin Zeinstra who will run through the side-lines, together with Danny Makkelie and Pol van Boekel which are going to monitor what is happening in both penalty areas.
Exactly 10 nights later Real Madrid and Liverpool players have to listen to all 5 men who are coming from Serbia. For the 'strongest' tournament in Kyiv, Ukraine, an other 45 year old will have a main, leading role at the pitch - Milorad Mazic. Milovan Ristic and Dalibor Djurdjevic are going to signal for out together with corner kicks, while Nenad Djokic and Danilo Grujic will be standing near the goals.

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Lucky 13

Exactly seven days ago, the world football organization announced who will monitor the video assistant referee system for the World Cup next month. If this number were deliberately chosen or not we will never find out, but 13 men are going to close up in the room and never come out on the pitch. In short: these (un)lucky 13 are going to be like those spectators who do not have the opportunity to travel in Russia and watch live games as the whole time will see them on television. However, they are going to have one big and special task: to watch closely and look for any controversial moments. These helping referees are chosen on previous experience with the system, they are designated only for this job, and 4 different colleagues will work on video analysis for every 64 matches. No names are going to be written here (you can read them on FIFA website), but instead we will mention continents: 9 of them are from Europe, South America has 3 while 1 come from Asia.

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Bye-bye to one tournament, destroying another, and hello to third

Who would have thought that the 2017 event will be the last. Two weeks ago the world football organization (probably) is making its own plans for future international competitions, while no body is asking the players can they keep this tempo.
- Due to very poor ratings and sagging popularity FIFA has decided to completely abolish the Confederations Cup. Thus, champions from six regions played its last competition previous summer in Russia with Germany happens to be its rear winner.
- If this is already cancelled another has to be re-designed, and the burden has fall into the Club World Cup. Starting from 2021 it would be played every 4 years, it will last 18 days and is going to compete 24 teams, out of which half of them comes from Europe. This World Cup, volume (or part) 2, or short: mini-World Cup would be held in June and is going to be played in a period where will not overlapped with the national championships, especially those in Europe. In brief: everything is going to be wrecked with this 'revamp'.
- African and Asian continent are still silent about this new tournament, in Europe and North, Central America and Caribbean (CONCACAF) are both waiting for September to begin, and FIFA is introducing its own: Nations league. The concept of this new (global) league is going to be the same, and months of playing will be September, October and December.
Launch of the mini-World Cup and global Nations league (described here) have to be discussed later this month, and already some European leagues are opposing the projects. And for financing these new two debut leagues, FIFA relies on private sponsors which will gather around 21 billion euros in a 2021 - 2033 period.

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Thrown out from EuroCups

In the past 14 days UEFA have expelled two teams in a total on five years from both European league competitions. One of them is 'less' known, while the other is a giant, and both of them are having financial difficulties of various meanings.
A club in Switzerland from the same city - Sion was thrown out for forgetting to pay money for a transfer. They are banned for two seasons plus its president Christian Constantin have to pay 235.000 euros for attacking television commentator Rolf Fringer in September 2017. Because of that he was also absent from this sport for nine months.
If the above team have amnesia for paying a player, the next are having the opposite troubles: for not giving wages to the players. Last Tuesday UEFA have removed Panathinaikos on three years and on top of that has to pay 100.000 euros. Due to very bad financial situation players from the Greek club has not receive their salaries from October 2017.

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All groups are known for Asian Cup 2019

Eight months from now (plus one day) is starting edition number 17 of the Asian championship. In total there is 24 teams who were divided in 4 pots of 6 teams, and now in reverse order: for the Asian Cup 2019 final 6 groups will comprise of 4 teams. All these happened today at the well known skyscraper Burj Khalifa in the Armani hotel in Dubai.
Before the draw it was only known that the host of the competition is going to be in the first group. And for the draw itself four main (two current and two legendary) stars from the continent showed up at the podium: Philip Younghusband, Sunil Chhetri, Sun Jihai and Ali Daei who mixed up and took out the little balls backwards from pot 4 to pot 1 to form the following groups:

Group A: United Arab Emirates, Thailand, India, Bahrain.

Group B: Australia, Syria, Palestine, Jordan.

Group C: South Korea, PR China, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines.

Group D: IR Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Yemen.

Group E: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon, North Korea.

Group F: Japan, Uzbekistan, Oman, Turkmenistan.

Beginning very early next year, this exciting event is going to start 05 January, and whether Australia can defend its title we are going to find out 01 February.

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