An interesting piece was sent to me about corruption in FIFA. Yeah, that is nothing new but I thought it was a good read. In the picture you can see FIFA President Blatter (left) sharing a drink with alleged Russian criminal Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (right) and Russian World Cup bid member Viacheslav Koloskov at a Moscow nightclub in 2005.

FIFA Vice-President Jack Warner, whom allegations of corruption were made, has resigned from his post at football's world governing body. Any chance that this move could be seen as a positive development within the upper echelons of the game have been completely overridden by the words expressed by FIFA itself in the aftermath of his resignation.

***Qatar unveils plans for "sustainable" World Cup 2022 stadiums. Today Qatar and German design firm AS&P revealed plans for three stadiums for the 2022 World Cup that are intended to be environmentally friendly. Paying for those stadiums will be countless barrels of oil which will be drilled from deep within the Earth, which will then be sold, transported on a oil-burning tanker, processed in a pollution spewing refinery, transported on diesel-burning trucks, and then resold to end-users for them to burn in their SUVs.

DOHA, Qatar Qatar has welcomed an investigation into alleged corruption in its victorious 2022 World Cup bid. The 2022 host nation said the evidence put forward so far was false, unsubstantiated and coming from a whisteblower who is probably a former employee "with a significant axe to grind." Qatar has been on the defensive [.

FIFA cleared the re-election of Sepp Blatter as FIFA president today.

"No investigation against Blatter is warranted," according to Petrus Damaseb, the ethics committee deputy chairman.

A full inquiry into Mohammed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner having made bribes to the Caribbean Football Union officials in exchange for their votes in the presidential elections will be conducted later till which time both executive members are suspended.

The FIFA/CONCACAF corruption mess just keeps getting uglier and uglier.

Just days after blowing the whistle on alleged bribes involving then-CONCACAF President Jack Warner and FIFA presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam, Chuck Blazer has been fired by the man who has temporarily replaced Warner as the head of CONCACAF.

To say today was a rollercoaster is understatement. With everyone in FIFA backstabbing each other, some little bits slipped through most of the media cracks.As many of you know, serial klepto, Jack Warner (former pres of Concacaf) was suspended from all football actions indefinitely. His replacement, a one Lisle Austin, who also claimed they never received any bribes despite several federations
[[ This is a content summary only.

It should go without saying that if you are looking for the best writing on the current car crash that is FIFA at the moment, you should probably be following, amongst others, Matt Scott, David Conn and Paul Kelso on Twitter, to say the least.

Defender's header back to keeper is too hot to handle If goalkeeper Diego Barreto, of Paraguyan side Cerro Porteno, was taking bribes you would hope he would do a better job of concealing his actions that this. That worryingly leads us to conclude that this howler must be down to human error. Somehow Barreto finds [.

By CALEB SONNELAND

It can only go from bad to worse for FIFA and its continued war against corruption.

Currently suspended FIFA vice president Jack Warner claims he has no intention of meeting with investigators looking into the bribery allegations surrounding the troubled organization.

Jack Warner sat in a corner, eating bribes and hey ......

A five figure annual pension for the rest of his life given by FIFA. Not to mention FIFA dropped their investigation after his resignation. He also gave the finger to former FBI chief Louis Freeh's investigation into the alleged CFU votes for cash bribery case which led to Mohammed Bin Hammam being suspended from all football related activities.

British sports journalist Andrew Warshaw has reported in the Inside World Football newsletter that sources close to the FIFA Ethics Committee's case against Asian Football Confederation President Mohamed bin Hammam "have indicated" that the Qatari, accused of paying cash bribes to 25 Caribbean FIFA members in exchange for votes, "will almost certainly be banned for life and be forced to go to

Another reason to dissolve CONCACAF?:

ZURICH (AP) -- Caribbean soccer leaders were given 48 hours by FIFA to explain their part in a Trinidad meeting where Mohamed bin Hammam allegedly offered them bribes or face life bans from the sport.

Caribbean Football Union members have been asked for their "truthful and complete" versions of events, FIFA said Tuesday.

We all understand that agents, and indeed all middle people, are leeches on the sport of football, grabbing their inflated percentages while skirting between the black and grey markets, bribing and threatening people and corrupting the game.
They force players to adhere to certain match data as basic sabermetrics measures the obvious, they enter into third party arrangements and other forms of disguised dual ownership of players to confuse both the footballing authorities and the tax regime, they control aspects of the media sometimes psychopathically so, and many persuade players to underperform so that insider gambles may be achieved on what the fan thinks is an authentic football match.

Who knew that tickets to a Arsenal match could land a U.S. business in hot water, and possibly have an executive facing up to 10 years in the slammer?
These are questions that attorneys, such as Philip Hilder, a white-collar criminal defense attorney at Hilder & Associates in Houston, are trying quickly understand the answers to for their clients.

The Football Association of Thailand (FAT) will launch an internal investigation into allegations of corruption in the organisation, said FAT vice president PolGeneral Worapong Chewpreecha .
A Senate committee on sports alleged last week that three highranking officials at the FAT took bribes and unilaterally appointed a referee for a Thailand Premier League match.

*** Hundreds of ticket holders were locked out of Qatar's Khalifa Stadium for the AFC Asian Cup final between Japan and Australia on Saturday. The Qatari organizers acknowledged that the gates to the stadium had been shut well in advance of kick-off, causing many fans to be denied entry and miss the entire match.

Let's not get carried away by the shock of the match-fixing scandal. A cap on foreign players in Veikkausliiga isn't the answer.

When Timo Soini coined his ever more popular catch phrase "Missä EU, siellä ongelma" (Where there is the EU, there are problems), he created a brilliant out on any tough question regarding his European politics.

So, FIFA and Interpol have united to crack down on match-fixing. Sepp Blatter is concerned that if money influences the game, then people will lose respect for the sport. Forget kettles. Forget pots. Let's just all cover our mouths, contain our laughter, and fight the tears flowing from our eye sockets.

LONDON, England The English Football Association (FA) is to abstain from voting in the upcoming FIFA presidential election between Sepp Blatter and Mohamed Bin Hammam, it was announced Thursday. FA chairman David Bernstein said in a statement there were a "range of issues" which made it "difficult" to vote for incumbent Blatter or Asian [.

Update: The FIFA Ethics Committee has opened proceedings against Jack Warner and Mohammed Bin Hammam over possible charges of bribery (official FIFA statement). The committee is due to meet (and most likely decide) on May 29th, just a couple of days before the June 1 elections date (and funnily enough, on a Sunday, right after the Champions League final).

Scandinavian misbehaving no, Finland is not technically a part of Scandinavia, but...come on seems to come in bulk. The Swedes spent some time in trouble yesterday, earning a timeout for the masses, and the Finns, while at it for some time, just keep riding the slippery slope.

Of all the places, Finland is mired in a huge bribery scandal, with layers being peeled back by the day.

By ADAM SERRANO

Sepp Blatter has lost his lone competitor for the FIFA presidency.

Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam withdrew his bid to become the president of FIFA just a day before he is to stand before the FIFA ethics committee due to allegations of bribery.

Maybe that crazy old dude was right about the apocalypse. Look:Spurs make it to the CL Semis,Barca defeats Man U handidly in the CL Finals,bin Hammam drops out of the FIFA Presidency election,and then this...Jack Warner provisionally suspended from FIFA.What?!And one of the best parts? A Blatter says that Warner knew about the bribes and Warner says its a conspiracy by America.

He maybe a bit of a fascist but he's made the IOC a cleaner organization

FIFA is imploding from within as each passing minute brings about more and more details of corruption with Jack Warner deciding to turn whistle blower. It's all a bit rich coming from a man who has millions profiting from his position within the FIFA hierarchy.

Welcome one and all! Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls!
To the The Amazing
Jack Warner - Sepp Blatter - Mohamed Bin Hammam
FIFA Flea Circus!
FIFA is nearing fully chaotic meltdown with new scandals being thrown around almost everyday. Its like the greatest circus of all time.

This isn't a post about the World Cup bidding process fix we all knew was in and we are just starting to learn the details about, but a follow-up to Monday's discussion of Fifa's supposedly aggressive initiative to tackle match-fixing around the world.

It's been admitted by Fifa that hundreds of games have been fixed in the past few years.

By Chris Wright

In an interview with German press agency DPA, Argentinian FIFA ExCo member Julio Grandona started by pissing and whining about the relentless attacks on 'the FIFA family' by the English media, denied being glad-handed by the Qatar 2022 team in return for his vote and then went on to implicate himself in perhaps the largest-scale bribe ever to have taken place within the governing body's corridors of power:

"Yes, I voted for Qatar, because a vote for the US (who were beaten by Qatar in the race to host the 2022 finals) would be like a vote for England and that is not possible.

Chuck Blazer's, FIFA's USA member whistleblowing has irked the CFU

In all of the talk of FIFA "reform" and "breakaways", let us not lose sight of CONCACAF as one of the most dysfunctional regional associations.

After all, this "crisis" was precipitated by Chuck Blazer's whistleblowing of $40,000 bribes being paid out in a meeting of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) arranged by Jack Warner in lieu of votes for Mohammed Bin Hammam, the challenger to Sepp Blatter.

This blog is at heart about my love affair with soccer, an affair that is unwavering after five or six years. From very early on I became aware of the corruption that has been in our game and that is in our game at a high level. I was more properly informed about it after reading Andrew Jennings' book, Foul!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Please join all your soccer friends in the Twin Cities for a special Fund Raising screening of Rise & Shine: The Jay DeMerit Story
Sat Jun 11 at 4:30pm - The Sweetwater in St Paul
USA v Panama game kicks off at 7pm
The movie is still a work in progress and the filmmakers are on a mission to raise funds to finish it.

On this week's roundup, even the women are doing it: England's women's team crash out of the World Cup – on penalties! The Newscorp scandal: how could it affect English football? And the woman who accused three FIFA members of taking bribes to vote for Qatar 2022 withdraws her claim, but even the withdrawal smacks of suspicion.

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- Throughout the day, the QPR Report Messageboard has news updates, comments and perspectives - even links to other board comments of interest re QPR matters (on and off the field) along with football (and ONLY football) topics in general....Also Follow: QPR REPORT ON TWITTER
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- "German prosecutors charge banker over F1 bribes (Allegations re Bernie Ecclestone Paying Bribe to German Banker) --- Telegraph "Formula One chief executive Bernie Ecclestone formally accused of paying bribe" .

Warner And Hammam: Guilty As Charged? - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

The BBC has obtained a document authored by the Carribean Football Union (CFU) detailing claims that Jack Warner had full knowledge of and participated in the distribution of cash bribes to members of the CFU at a special meeting promoting Mohamed Bin Hammam's Fifa presidential bid.

The FIFA Ethics Committee formally found Mohamed Bin Hammam guilty in a votes for bribes scandal on Saturday, receiving a lifetime ban and ending his association with world soccer. Bin Hammam was the president of the Asian Football Confederation and a FIFA presidential candidate. He stood accused of trading cash for presidential votes at a meeting of the Caribbean Football Union.

Cash was for expenses not bribes, claims furious Bin Hammam

"We did not do anything wrong," says banned Asian football chief

View the full story here: The Mirror

A news article on 2011-07-24 12:41:25 from: The Mirror

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

• Kop That: Hull City 3 Liverpool 0: Liverpool new signings fail to impress http://bit.ly/qvBSYN 23:44:58, 2011-07-24
• Kop That: Liverpool midfielder Alberto Aquilani set to join Fiorentina http://bit.ly/o5k85N 23:44:56, 2011-07-24
• Kop That: Beckham interview: 'Sick feeling' over failed 2018 bid http://bit.

By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Aug 25, 2011) US Soccer Players -- Former FIFA presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam has responded to FIFA's fuller explanation of why they chose to ban him for life over a votes for bribes scandal centered around Caribbean countries. Before the collective eye roll that will likely greet another column on FIFA politics, it's worth keeping in mind who that serves.

Bin Hammam hits out at FIFA over bribes ban

Qatari claims FIFA would never have dared to take action against him if he were European

View the full story here: The Mirror

A news article on 2011-09-06 10:50:43 from: The Mirror

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

FIFA's case against some 15 Caribbean countries began yesterday in the whole bin Hammam/Warner bribery for votes. Caribbean Football Union VP Klass has already been banned for 26mo and slapped on the wrist and been told he was naughty. And by naughty, I mean fined $5000, but when you receive nearly $40,000 in bribes that you never account for, what is $5000?