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...
There are all kinds of examples of inappropriate blindness. There was Captain Smith of the SS Titanic not seeing the iceberg. There was Admiral Nelson putting the telescope to his eye patch not to see the signal to retreat. There was Johnny Papalia the mafia thug who beat up the head of Toronto’s illegal gambling racket in front of two-hundred people in a crowded restaurant and when the police arrived none of the patrons said they saw anything. Then there...
Below is the confidential paper on building an investigative culture in a corrupt sports world that I wrote for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Think Tank held in Lausanne on September 20th. It was supposed to be secret but some craven twit leaked it to his pals in the media within 24-hours of it being circulated. Now that a number of journalists have read it, I have no hesitation in making it public. The headlines are: 1) World Anti-Doping Agency is not...
On the bright side, he has never actually been convicted of fraud, racketeering or money laundering. He has also never been arrested for corruption. No has ever caught him on hidden camera offering bribes or election gifts. Ummmm... well, thats about it really. The news that Canada's own Victor Montagliani was elected president of CONCACAF, the continental confederation in FIFA representing North, Central America and the Caribbean, is another underwhelming sign of the lack of reform inside FIFA. For international readers here...
The FIFA presidential election will take place on Friday in Zurich, giving the game's power brokers a golden chance to affect change. But there's a catch. The 207 eligible presidents of the national football federations wield the power to vote, yet these officials are, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, steeped in a world where brazen criminals have repeatedly milked the sport for their own personal profit. ** This is a feature article for Bleacher Report. You can read below or at...
https://www.declanhill.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/X-Fifa-vice-president-Jack-Warner-is-caught-on-tape-offering-_gifts-of-25_000-to-Caribbean.flv.mp4 There are two unresolved questions here in Zurich with days to go before the biggest election in FIFA's history. The two front runners are Gianni Infantino and Sheikh Salman. They both have the official support of two confederations: Salman his own Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the African Confederation (CAF). Infantino – Europe (UEFA) and Latin America (CONMEBOL). Most of the discussions, media spinning, rumours, etc in this city is about whether Salman's support is declining and Infantino is gaining: or,...
Today, FIFA announced new reforms. What good do all these paper plans do if so many of their executives are corrupt? You can put lipstick on a pig - it is still a pig. Below quotes - from today's press conference by US Attorney-General Loretta Lynch, Robert Capers and Chief of the IRS Richard Weber. "Today is another good day for soccer fans. Unfortunately from the decades-long corruption that has been uncovered by the US investigation, good intent has been replaced...
1- So it begins.I write of the mad scramble for cover of the silent sports journalists, the creepy academics and the cringing consultants who said little against FIFA or CONCACAF over the last three decades. My least favourite are that gang of academics who gathered around the Sorbonne/ICSS to “research match-fixing”. Almost incredibly they linked themselves with both FIFA (via Interpol) and the Qatari sports establishment. It is difficult to find organizations with less credibility in the public's eyes...
