“He will give us a huge step forward in quality… He could help us for the next eight or nine weeks.”

The quote from Sheffield Wednesday head coach Danny Rohl makes the situation sound simple. In reality, it is anything but.

On Thursday, with his team mired in the Championship’s relegation zone, Rohl announced his intention to sign free-agent left-back Nico Schulz. Schulz had been training at the club.

Why is he a free agent? He was released by Borussia Dortmund last year after being charged with domestic abuse. Schulz denied the allegations.

Legal proceedings came to an end this week when the case against him was dropped. Schulz agreed to pay €150,000 (£128,000) to domestic violence charities — but was not convicted, with the case officially dropped.

Sheffield Wednesday’s plans to sign him are still controversial, with the club criticised by fan groups over the proposed transfer. This is the situation.

Who is Nico Schulz?

Schulz, 30, is an attacking left-back who played for several Bundesliga clubs — Hertha Berlin, Borussia Monchengladbach and Hoffenheim — before sealing a move to Borussia Dortmund in 2019.

He struggled at Dortmund — only making 40 league appearances over four seasons — and was marginalised once Edin Terzic took over at the start of the 2022-23…

Over the course of his 17 years as the most powerful figure in world football, Sepp Blatter was memorably characterised by the venerable British sportswriter Brian Glanville as someone who had 50 new ideas every day, “51 of them bad”.

There was the one where the then FIFA president said the key to attracting more interest in women’s football was for the players to wear “tighter shorts” to “create a more female aesthetic”; the one where he proposed games be split into four quarters; the one where he suggested the goal be made 50cm (19in) wider and 25cm taller; the one where he urged any player racially abused on the pitch to settle the matter by shaking hands with his abuser at the final whistle; the one where, with his regime finally crumbling in 2015, he declared he was the man to “clean up” FIFA.

But Blatter had his moments. He was highly influential in the introduction of the back-pass rule in 1992. He led FIFA’s clampdown on both time-wasting and the dreaded “tackle” from behind. Before he became an eccentric power-crazed FIFA president, he was a skilled administrator with a fervent passion for trying to modernise and improve the game.

One Blatter idea that fell by the wayside was something called “6+5”.

It was as controversial as it was intriguing….

Tonight, Lionel Messi is fancied to win the Ballon d’Or, which will be the eighth time the Argentinian has walked off with the award, while fellow World Cup winner Aitana Bonmati is favourite take the Ballon d’Or Feminin.

It’s the highest individual honour that a footballer can receive, and while the physical manifestation of it — a quite literal golden, 18-carat, 22cm football that weighs around 12 kilos — is impressive enough, the real prize is the kudos and glory that comes with it.

Why is it so prestigious? How do you win it? Who decides who wins it? When did the people behind it discover that women play football too? Do players care? And what is the plural of Ballon d’Or?

We invite you to find out all of this, and possibly more, by reading on…

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What is the Ballon d’Or?

The Ballon d’Or is an annual award given to the best men’s and women’s footballers in the world. Basically, it’s world football’s MVP award.

Whose bright idea was it?

The first Ballon d’Or was awarded in 1956, and back then was widely known simply as the European Footballer Of The Year award. It was the brainchild of Gabriel Hanot and Jacques Ferran, two journalists from France Football…

The morning after the night before, Harry Kane met the German media.

Bayern Munich ordinarily hold their press conferences at Sabener Strasse, but interest in Kane’s transfer meant a switch of venue, to the Allianz Arena and its gleaming auditorium.

Watched by his brother Charlie and his parents, Pat and Kim, Kane eased into life as the most expensive player in the history of both his new club and German football. The last few days has been a blur.

“A lot has been going on”, he said, “a lot of new faces and new surroundings.”

Thomas Muller has already offered him a round of golf, he said, and despite the disappointing end to his first day, with the 3-0 defeat to RB Leipzig in the German Super Cup, Kane, his wife Kate, and their young children have been made to feel very welcome.

“The reception me and my family have got since getting here, and at the game last night, have been magical”, he said.

Support has come from elsewhere, too. England head coach Gareth Southgate sent a congratulatory text over the weekend and the two plan to talk at length next week, once the dust has settled from one of the most protracted transfer sagas of the summer.

It has been a “rollercoaster”, Kane conceded, and the last 48 hours of the deal had their “ups and downs”. Kane is happy…

A day after a historic disaster, there were still precious few answers.

Captain Alexandra Popp told reporters shortly before boarding a commercial flight home it would take a few more sleepless nights before anyone could get to grips with Germany’s worst-ever showing in a Women’s World Cup.

The German FA had been so certain of progress beyond the group stage that no charter plane had been booked to be on standby for Friday, the day after the team’s final group match. The governing body’s chairman, Bernd Neuendorf, hadn’t even set foot in Australia by the time Germany were eliminated. His plan had been to join the team as the tournament started in earnest with today’s arrival of the knockout phase.

Going out at the hands of Morocco, Colombia and South Korea had felt utterly inconceivable before the World Cup began, a one-in-a-million freak accident that didn’t warrant much worrying over, not even after the last-minute defeat by Colombia in the middle group game had ramped up the pressure. “Germany is not a nation that needs to tremble,” midfielder Lena Oberdorf had said after that 2-1 loss.

Such confidence proved misguided. The precise…

It is that time of year for us to draw conclusions in the world of football. Like accepting that Manchester City are now as good as it gets in Europe. Or that Jack Grealish is partial to an all-nighter.

And here’s another one: football is a boom industry and at the very heart of its expansion is the Premier League.

Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance has been published and its forensic analysis details that just shy of €30billion (£25.6bn; $32.5bn) was generated by European clubs across the 2021-22 season. Covid-19 might have applied the brakes but the accelerator is back to being squeezed with growth of seven per cent year on year.

The European football market has expanded by almost €10billion since 2012-13 — a billion for every season, if you like — and central to the continued uplift is the Premier League. All by itself, English football’s top division now generates €6.4billion (£5.5bn) per year. Spain’s La Liga, its nearest competitor, only just turned over half of that sum last season.

In the women’s game, the upward trajectory is even steeper, with 60 per cent growth year on year in the English Football Association’s Women’s Super League.

Deloitte’s 32nd Annual Review depicts a sport with a widening appeal and enduring interest levels…

Fortuna Dusseldorf will offer fans free tickets to some of their home matches next season as part of plans to help the city and its supporters grow closer together. 

The club, who are fighting for promotion from the German second tier, have said free tickets will be offered to at least three league home games for all supporters who register to be part of the ticket draw, with the costs being covered by sponsors. This will be part of a pilot scheme, with Fortuna saying they have an eventual “goal of allowing free entry to all league home games”.

Fortuna CEO, Alexander Jobst, said on Wednesday: “We open up football for all. We will have free entry for league games in this stadium.

“We call it ‘Fortuna for all’ which can and will lead us to a successful future.

“Fortuna remains a club and this club belongs to friends and members. We have the responsibility to set the foundations for a successful future. That was our compass.”

The 2. Bundesliga side have signed a sponsorship deal with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Provincial, TARGOBANK and Common Goal to allow the scheme to happen. They also confirmed that 20 per cent of the revenues created will go to youth and women’s football, while another 20 per cent will go to digital infrastructure and the stadium.

Mayor of…