fifa Page 14 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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...
Media Firm At Heart Of FIFA Scandal Sued To Protect The Sanctity Of Its Bribes
You know when you hear about some friend who bought some weed off a new drug dealer, only to find out it was probably half oregano, and they’re upset but don’t know what to do, and you tell them “Well, it’s not like you can take a drug dealer to court?” Apparently, the crooked marketing execs and ve...
Report: FBI Investigating Sepp Blatter's Role In $100 Million Bribery Case
According to a new report from BBC Sport, the FBI is looking into Sepp Blatter’s role in a $100 million bribe paid to FIFA by now-defunct sports marketing company ISL. Former FIFA executive Joao Havelange apparently wrote in a letter to the FBI that Blatter was well aware of the corruption within FI...
Acting FIFA President Appears To Fall Asleep During Meeting On Reforms
To be fair, when the status quo involves secret deals hashed out in far-flung locales, multimillion dollar bribery schemes, and showdowns with police in ritzy hotels, I can see how plans for reform wouldn’t exactly capture interim FIFA president Issa Hayatou’s attention....
Report: Swiss Authorities Raid Same Hotel As Last Time, Arrest More FIFA Officials (UPDATED)
Remember six months ago, when Swiss authorities raided a luxury hotel in Zurich to arrest a number of FIFA officials, on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department? Luckily for those of us who want to see the incompetent and corrupt world soccer organization brought to its knees, it’s happening again!...
President Of German Soccer Association Resigns Amid World Cup Bribery Scandal
DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach has resigned from his post today. While he’s maintained his and his organization’s innocence amid allegations that German soccer officials bought votes in order to win World Cup hosting rights in 2006, Niersbach has decided to take “political responsibility” for the ...
Watch This Harrowing Documentary About The Working Conditions In Qatar
Sometimes it’s easy to get wrapped up in FIFA’s more bureaucratic forms of corruption and forget that the biggest crime by far that soccer’s governing body has committed was aiding and abetting the workplace atrocities that are so prevalent in Qatar....
Sepp Blatter Says U.S. Was Supposed To Hold 2022 World Cup
Just when you think Sepp Blatter has revealed the full extent of his kooky theories and self-centered worldview, he opens his mouth again and wows you with even more crazy talk. In his newest interview, Blatter elucidates his belief that the entire FIFA scandal was a covert ploy by Michel Platini an...
The Names On The FIFA Ballot Sound Made-Up
With Sepp Blatter (a pretty funny name in its own right) on his way out, the FIFA presidency is wide open. The rogues’ gallery of candidates are already positioning themselves—human rights groups accuse one potential frontrunner, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain, of literally snitchin...