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Michel Platini may be banned from football but not from Uefa’s congress, where the election of a new president may not be quite the brave new world football had hoped for at its governing bodiesOnce more to Fifa, the Chinatown of sports governance, where you always end up just having to forget it. Dark and terrible things happen, but you have to move on unsatisfactorily. There is no resolution. The only thing you gain is cynicism.We begin with the organisation’s ethics committee, a body so relentlessly self-satirising that it would make a North Korean democracy committee look the less preposterous institution. Related: Aleksander Ceferin, Slovenian federation leader, elected Uefa president Related: Michel Platini declares he has clear conscience in Uefa...

When the Strikers were bought by an ownership group that included the World Cup winner, hopes were high. But many are now disenchanted with the projectFew names in American sport spark a reaction like the original North American Soccer League of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, a subject to be revisited each time the need arises for a lesson on how badly things can go wrong for football in the United States.The kitschy sexiness of the old NASL essentially collapsed under its own weight, a failed attempt to ramp up popularity for a very European brand of football in a recalcitrant United States. Some of those team names still cling on to life, in the MLS and modern incarnation of...