• Pardew departs Dutch club after just eight games in charge
• Assistants Chris Powell and Paul Butler also leave the club

Alan Pardew has left his position as the manager of Eredivisie club Den Haag by mutual consent, days after the Dutch season was cancelled.

Pardew was appointed in December and tasked with saving the club from relegation. The 58-year-old was unable to lead them out of the relegation zone, but the team were reprieved when the season was scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic.

• President calls for resumption of football despite crisis
• Brazil has more than 5,900 deaths due to the coronavirus

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro wants to see football competitions restart soon despite the country’s high number of coronavirus cases, arguing that players are less likely to die from Covid-19 because of their physical fitness.

Bolsonaro is one of the few world leaders that still downplays the risks brought by the coronavirus, which he has likened to “a little flu”.

Barcelona icon Andrés Iniesta has video-called the children born because of his famous goal against Chelsea in 2009. The late winner at Stamford Bridge led to a spike in pregnancies. 'Has your mum shown you the goal?' Iniesta asks Ignacio, born on 18 January. Of course she had, Ignacio says: 'You were a star.'

• Happy conception day: Andrés Iniesta calls children born because of his goal

As the Premier League weighs up a possible return in June, many questions remain unanswered. From testing regimes to where games will be played, Paul MacInnes takes a look at the key hurdles

• Project Restart: the hurdles Premier League football must clear to resume

Many questions need answers, not least where games will be played and the not-insignificant 100 concerns of club doctors

Without government endorsement of a return to play, nothing can happen. Since the beginning of March, when games were still being played in front of paying crowds, the Premier League has said it would follow government advice on the best way to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Spurs’ former scout David Webb tells the story of how four supremely shrewd acquisitions helped take the team to the Champions League final

The anniversary falls on Friday. In the second extraordinary semi-final comeback in as many days, Tottenham overcame Ajax courtesy of a 96th-minute winner from their most recent recruit. A year and a half into his Spurs career, Lucas Moura completed his hat-trick. It was an advertisement for enforced continuity, an antidote to the obsession with spending as the only team in the top five European leagues to go through the season without signing anyone became Champions League finalists.

But it was not entirely true to call Tottenham the team without transfers. There was a golden age of recruitment under Mauricio Pochettino: not in 2018-19, but a seven-month spell in 2015 when Spurs brought in Dele Alli, Son Heung-min, Kieran Trippier and Toby Alderweireld all for less than £45m. Four years, and four top-four finishes later, each of a quartet which could have been valued at a combined £250m started the Champions League final.

• Video call to follow league shareholders meeting on Monday
• Coronavirus testing plan still to be approved by clubs

Top-flight players are to hold talks with Premier League executives next week, before any attempt to restart the football season can be signed off.

Players are to be given the chance to air any concerns over Project Restart in a video-conference call likely to include representatives of all 20 clubs.

In an empty stadium with strict coronavirus protocols enforced, probably the first spit- and snot-free match in football history drew legions of online fans to South Korea

So football is back. Jeonbuk Motors and Suwon Bluewings opened the coronavirus-delayed K-League season in an empty stadium in the south-west city of Jeonju on Friday evening and for legions of online fans around the world, starved of football by the pandemic, the exertions were a sporting balm. It is fair to say that no football match played on South Korean soil had attracted this level of international interest since the 2002 World Cup finals.

With the exceptions of Belarus, Burundi, Tajikistan and Nicaragua, the global game has been at a virtual standstill, presenting the K-League with an opportunity to fill the hole left by the postponement or cancellation of all other major competitions.

As football prepares to start or resume seasons we look at 17 countries to see how close they are to a return

Clubs and the football federation hope for an August restart with a July training phase to step up for a resumption of the A-League, which was postponed indefinitely on 24 March. Five rounds of games, plus the finals, remain. All games are likely to be played in Sydney without spectators, with Wellington Phoenix to be based in NSW for a two-week quarantine before playing. The National Rugby League has the green light to restart on 28 May, which may lead to fixture clashes at cross-code venues such as Kogarah and Bankwest Stadium.

• Ifab gives green light but clubs expected to stick with it
• Vote needed on whether to allow five substitutions

Premier League clubs will debate whether to dump VAR for the remainder of the season – if it can be completed – after the International Football Association Board (Ifab) said that individual competitions can do so if they want to.

The clubs, who will hold a conference call on Monday, must also vote on another Ifab temporary amendment – whether to agree to the use of five substitutes in matches.

• Scott Duxbury: ‘How is there any semblance of fairness?’
• League would ‘bear no resemblance to the one we started’

Watford have joined Aston Villa and Brighton in voicing objections to the Premier League’s plan to play out the season at neutral venues on police advice, claiming it would be unfair to relegate clubs on the basis of a competition that “bears no resemblance to the one that was started”.

Sitting just above the bottom three when the league was suspended and uncomfortably aware Villa could leapfrog them if they play and win their game in hand, Watford were due to play five of their remaining nine fixtures at Vicarage Road and feel that being deprived of home advantage could affect the number of points they gather.