fifa Page 11 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
World Cup Host Country Jails Dutch Rape Victim On Adultery Charges
FIFA remains committed to hosting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where a projected 7,000 slaves will die in the process of constructing facilities funded by Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Anheuser-Busch. But the atrocious human rights situation in that country extends beyond the laborers shanghaied into b...
FIFA Reveals $80 Million In Probably Illegal Payments, Headquarters Raided Again
FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, were raided yesterday by police, as they sought evidence that former top FIFA officials Sepp Blatter, Jerome Valcke, Markus Kattner illegally awarded themselves $80 million in pay raises and bonuses, AP reports. Blatter and Valcke were previously banned from...
FIFA's New President Has A Couple Huge Scandals Brewing Already
Just a couple of months ago, newly elected FIFA president Gianni Infantino promised to usher in an era of accountability for soccer’s scandal-ravaged governing body. Not a month ago, he declared FIFA’s annus horribilis officially over, while quietly snatching unprecedented executive authority. And n...
FIFA Exec Fired For Giving Himself Millions Of Dollars In Secret Bonuses
Yesterday, Markus Kattner was the interim secretary general of FIFA, a post he stepped into when his predecessor, Jérôme Valcke, was suspended for all sorts of shady money deals. Yesterday, the most prominent news clippings his name popped up were in relation to his awareness of the secret payment b...
Citing FIFA's New Power To Fire Him, FIFA's Independent Audit Chief Quits
The person with the most necessary job in the world, FIFA’s chairman of audit and compliance, has resigned, because FIFA’s top officials on Friday passed a measure that allows them to fire auditing, finance, and ethics officers at will....
FIFA’s New President Just Gave Himself More Power Than Sepp Blatter Ever Had
When we supposed what a Gianni Infantino FIFA presidency would look like back when he won the office in February, we saw visions of a celebrity-friendly, photo op-ready, travel-loving, money-giving, but basically powerless tenure. In some ways, this has been borne out already in his still-budding te...
Panama Papers Reveal FIFA Ethics Committee Member Might Have A Problem With Ethics
Juan Pedro Damiani is a longstanding member of FIFA’s ethics committee, the primary internal body that as of late has been tasked with rooting out the corruption of FIFA’s members and banning them from soccer’s governing body. From what we know about FIFA, it shouldn’t shock you to discover that Dam...
I Want Some Of Those Sweet FIFA Bribes
It seems like everyone in FIFA’s orbit gets a bribe. Just today, it was revealed that the former president of Honduras took bribes while working for FIFA’s television and marketing committee, whatever the hell that is. There’s bribe money everywhere! And you know who is getting none of it? Me....
Report: Sepp Blatter Made $3.6 Million In 2015 As FIFA President
Thanks to FIFA’s newly passed financial transparency rules, we have for the first time confirmation of exactly how much Sepp Blatter and at least one other top official earned in their roles at FIFA. According to these numbers, the former president made about $3.6 million in 2015....
FIFA Admits World Cup Bribes, Wants That Money Back From The U.S.
You can say many things about FIFA, but you can never say it doesn’t really like money, or that it doesn’t have enormous fucking balls....
Why FIFA's Unambitious New President Might Be Good News For Reform
To my mind, the most telling thing to come from this entire, interminable Extraordinary FIFA Congress wasn’t the election itself—in which Gianni Infantino, previously the general secretary of UEFA, became the new president of soccer’s powerful and scandal-ravaged governing body—nor was it the indivi...
The FIFA Election Is Already Very Silly
FIFA will hold its presidential election to replace Sepp Blatter on Friday. Well, Friday unless candidate Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein gets his way. Prince Ali has gone to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport in an attempt to postpone the election because he wants transparency. And transpar...
Wow, So This FIFA Exec Was An Even Bigger Corrupt Sleazeball Than We Thought, Huh?
When Jérôme Valcke—formerly Sepp Blatter’s righthand man as FIFA secretary general—was suspended and investigated after documents tying him to a shady World Cup ticket reselling racket came out, we all thought we were dealing with your run-of-the-mill venal FIFA greaseball. Now that FIFA has conclud...
FIFA Hit Real Madrid And Atlético With Two-Window Transfer Sanctions
Sepp Blatter warned everyone that this was coming, but it’s still a shocker seeing it: Real Madrid and Atlético have both been found in violation of FIFA rules regarding the signing of players under the age of 18 and punished with a prohibition on registering any new players for two transfer windows...
Ballon d’Or Voting Is Full Of Bizarre Ballots
This is how democracy works. You give the right to vote to a large swath of people of varying ages, expertise levels, and motivations, add up their collective responses, and hope to come out with a good result. Today’s Ballon d’Or award ceremony, where Lionel Messi won the thing for the fifth time o...
Sepp Blatter Calls Out Tough-Talking Brands For Being Phony
Freed from PR considerations following yesterday’s eight-year ban from soccer, a Nelly bandaid-rocking Sepp Blatter—who presumably sports it for the same reasons the rapper did, as an homage to his recently locked-up homies—has loosened his tongue a little bit. One of his targets is the brands and t...
How Sepp Blatter Lost Control Of His Monster
If Sepp Blatter could take a step back and look at the bigger picture, forgetting for a moment that today’s eight-year ban from all soccer activities likely means his long career as the world’s favorite sport’s most powerful figure has ended in disgrace and infamy, he might actually be proud of what...
Sepp Blatter Banned From Soccer For Eight Years
FIFA president Sepp Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini have been barred from the sport for eight years, over a 2011 payment of about £1.3 million that the FIFA ethics committee said was in exchange for Platini’s support of Blatter in an upcoming election. It feels almost like Al Capone and ta...
Tim Roth: I Starred In FIFA's Awful Propaganda Movie For The Money
Tim Roth is a real and talented actor who has been nominated for an Academy Award, among other recognitions of his good work, which made it very strange to see him starring as Sepp Blatter in the FIFA-financed propaganda film about the organization’s history, United Passions. FIFA spent about $27 mi...
Michel Platini, Facing Lengthy FIFA Ban, Will Boycott Ethics Hearing
Suspended UEFA president Michel Platini, along with suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter, are almost certain to receive long bans from soccer’s governing body by early next week. This has been clear for a while, and is supported by recent reports from those inside the FIFA ethics committee in charg...