After reading - Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way - you feel dirty. It is like bathing in a pool of scummy water for hours, but is nonetheless a fascinating story from a former insider of the FIFA world. Bonita Mersiades was a senior executive in the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) and one of the point people in their doomed bid to win the 2022 FIFA World Cup. From 2008 - 2010, she had an intimate...
The FIFA Corruption trial in Brooklyn is over now comes the question who really broke the story of high-level bribery and corruption in international soccer? Clue – it was not the sport journalists. “The ladies and gentlemen of the press came a great deal cheaper than an Olympic Committee member. If their potential accreditation to World Cup 98 did not fully concentrate their collective minds, there were always the freebies. The one thousand one hundred and eight-one (sic) journalists milled...
Interesting week in international sports. Lets start with the Champions League where once again we have a ‘choke-point’ where games are regularly fixed. Here is the scenario. You are a UEFA investigator. The rest of the world thinks that you have unlimited resources and money coming out of your elbows. You know that if you’re lucky, the system will give you a bent paper clip and an elastic band for resources to stop corruption in Europe’s premier competition – the Champions...
Alleged FIFA crime boss For years, reporters have been fond of saying “FIFA mafia”, “Mobsters of Football”. It has made for good copy, sold lots of media space – but what words do we use now that there really is a trial that focuses on the widespread criminal activity inside FIFA? The Brooklyn Federal Court House here in New York has seen a lot of mob trials. Over the years, there have been cases involving the five big Mafia families...
The door is thick and well padded, but it was not enough to protect the leaders of the first Russian revolution. It is located in a room in the labyrinth-like Hermitage Palace on the seafront of Saint Petersburg. Today, the Hermitage is the world’s largest museum. In October 1917, it was the headquarters of the Mensheviks – a weak, social democratic government. The Mensheviks had overthrown Czar Nicholas II a few months before and captured his vast palace. Unable to govern...
New York - Here at the Brooklyn Federal Court House, one of the most significant legal trials in sports history is underway. Two-and-a-half years ago, Swiss Police kicked open the doors of the Baur-au-Lac Hotel in Zurich and began arresting high-ranking FIFA officials. After long stretches of legal wrangling - during which twenty-four officials pled guilty to a wide-range of crimes from fraud to money laundering to racketeering - today, the case for the officials who did not plead...
If you blinked, you would have missed it. For less than three weeks, it looked as if the Kurds might have their own independent country. The Kurds control a mountainous area in northern Iraq and since the British occupation in 1920 they have been pushing for their own independent country. Last month, the Kurds held a referendum in which those who turned out voted 92 per cent in favour of independence. Cue cheers and celebrations in the Kurdish Highlands of Iraq. It...
Stephen Paddock and the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting It has been over-two weeks since Stephen Paddock went into a Las Vegas hotel room, took out 19 automatic machine guns and shot hundreds of people enjoying a country music concert in front of the hotel. In a 10-minute spree, Paddock killed 59 people and injured over-two-hundred others - some of them critically. Since that time, the U.S. media has been full of articles denouncing gun laws, postulating about Paddock’s mental...
This is an appalling, grotesque - but true - story. As Donald Trump unveils a new military strategy in Afghanistan, here is a story that will have you twisting with rage but understanding why NATO is failing in that country. If you have not been paying attention to the western intervention in Afghanistan since 2001, you may only be familiar with the story promoted by the mainstream media: NATO troops are fighting, accompanied by honest, decent Afghan allies, against the terrible,...
Ninety percent of match-fixing in football is easy to prevent. One of the keys to a successfully fighting corruption is to recognize ‘choke point games’. These are games – 3rd match in opening round of the World Cup, 6th match in Group Stage of Champions League or any Italian game featuring a team in danger of relegation from April onwards – where one team has a lot to gain, while the other has very little. This week’s home-away games of the...
