Gibraltar, a British territory on the southern tip of Spain, was accepted as a full member of UEFA at today's meetings of European soccer's governing body. It's the culmination of a 16-year push for international recognition, a quest fiercely opposed by Spain at every turn.

Istanbul club Fenerbahçe's Europa League match last Thursday was a sight to behold. The game was played in an empty stadium as punishment for a December match in which fans hurled fireworks onto the pitch, so the team set up a large viewing screen outside. Fans launched dozens of flares attached to small parachutes…

When Europol announced it had found evidence of 680 matches that might have been fixed by gamblers, investigators teased us with the good stuff. Champions League ties were among the questionable matches, including at least one in England. It took about a day for it to come out, and while the English team is wholly…

The day after the Super Bowl, you might have an annoying European friend or co-worker tell you he's unimpressed. He'll say how football is filled with commercials and downtime and Beyonce instead of game action, how the third-quarter brownout is an embarrassment to American infrastructure, how it's ludicrous that a…

In the 36th minute of the Euro 2012 semifinal, Mario Balotelli scored his second goal, a screamer to the top right corner. Balotelli ripped off his jersey and flexed, and the telecast cut to a woman in the stands, a German flag painted on her cheek, a single tear leaking from her eye.

Know this: UEFA is very protective of its sponsors. (Here are the Euro 2012 sponsors, soulless corporations all, and you should avoid their products for the remainder of the tournament. Except possibly Ukrsotsbank PJSC.) Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker, is just as corporate and just as interested in getting your…

KIEV & KHARKIV, Ukraine—The fast train from Kiev to Kharkiv takes four hours. I know this, although I am not on it. I want to be on it, but tickets are gone, sold weeks ago to assorted Germans and other more prepared fans traveling from the Ukrainian capital to the industrial city that lies 300 miles due east. They head …

The theme of the European Championship, which begins tomorrow, is racism. (To be fair to Poland and the Ukraine, the themes of international soccer over the last five years have been racism and goal-line technology. UEFA has made roughly the same progress on the two.) The BBC kicked it off with their sensationalist…

Manchester City is asking UEFA to punish Portuguese team Porto for alleged racial abuse directed at Mario Balotelli during Man City's 2-1 Europa League win Thursday.

Makes sense to everyone, right? The group, Femen ("Femen has established an international reputation for staging semi-naked protests in Ukraine and abroad."), held the naked demonstration outside Kiev's Olympic Stadium. They claim that UEFA is attempting to legalize prostitution during the 2012 European Championship.