International Football
SHOCK REVELATION IN COURT: FIFA OFFICIAL TOOK BRIBES TO BACK QATAR’S 2022 WORLD CUP BID
The Guardian of UK has reported that an Argentine senior FIFA official, Julio Grondona, took at least $1m in bribes to vote for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup.
The publication reported that a witness make the revelation in court, as part of a broad investigation into corruption at FIFA.
Grondona who was a senior vice-president at FIFA and head of the Argentina Football Association until his death in 2014, allegedly told the witness, Alejandro Burzaco, an Argentinian sports marketing executive, that he was owed the money in exchange for his vote, which helped Qatar secure the lucrative tournament.
Qatar’s victory, announced in December 2010 after four rounds of knockout voting by FIFA’s 22-person executive committee in Zurich, has been plagued with allegations of bribery and misconduct.
The sworn testimony, given in a New York City court on Tuesday, is some of the strongest evidence the 2022 vote was tainted.
Burzaco, the former CEO of the Argentinian sports marketing executive Torneos y Competencias, has already pleaded guilty to handing out millions of dollars in bribes to senior South American football officials in exchange for broadcast rights to major regional tournaments.
His testimony on Tuesday alleges a sustained program of annual and one-off bribes, often over $1m a time, to a group of influential executives on South America’s footballing body, Conmebol, over a period of around a decade.
Burzaco testified that while he was arranging a $1m bribe payment to Grondona and another $1m bribe to another senior FIFA executive, Ricardo Teixeira, Grondona informed Burzaco he had taken a bribe for his World Cup vote.
In total, the former executive said, he had arranged $15m in bribes for securing the rights to Copa America, which at that point were held by a rival marketing company.
Burzaco said that Grondona told him in January 2011 to also pay him Teixeria’s $1m Copa America bribe, which the Brazilian “owed him” as “Grondona voted for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup”.
The marketing executive had accompanied Grondona, Teixeria and Nicolás Leoz, then the Conmebol president, to Zurich for the vote in 2010 and had heard of their intention to back Qatar. “It was not a private thing,” Burzaco said.
As the voting got under way, Burcazo said Grondona told him that Leoz had initially voted for Japan and then South Korea.
During a break, he and Teixeria then pulled Leoz aside to “shake him up” and ask: “What the hell are you doing? Are you the one not voting for Qatar?” When the officials returned for the next vote, Leoz backed Qatar, Burcazo said.
The former marketing executive said that Grondona had not told him the total amount of money he accepted to make the Qatar vote or who the source of the bribe was.
But he claimed to have witnessed an altercation between Grondona and Qatari officials at a FIFA event months later where the football executive was furious at news reports implicating him in corrupt dealings and insinuated he had been underpaid for his vote.
“Basically, Grondona told them [the Qatari officials]: you will pay me $80m or write a letter saying you never paid me,” Burcazo said.
Burcazo’s evidence portrayed the Argentinian executive as a kingmaker in Conmebol’s allegedly corrupt enterprise.
The marketing executive said Grondona personally approved the bribes he and five other senior Conmebol officials were paid for regional tournament rights, often dictating the amounts – frequently seven-figure sums – and taking cuts for himself.
Burcazo would frequently travel with Grondona from Argentina to Conmebol’s headquarters in Luque in Paraguay, where “three or four Mercedes” would wait for them by the runway and take them straight from the plane, allowing them to skip customs, as “someone would take care of that”.
When Grondona arrived at the headquarters, Leoz would fly “forty or fifty Argentine flags around the building” to greet him. Teixeria, who resigned as president of Brazil’s federation amid corruption allegations in 2012, would receive the same treatment.
Burzaco’s testimony, which is expected to continue into Wednesday, also implicated the three former football executives, José Maria Marin, Manuel Burga and Juan Ángel Napout, currently on trial.
The three former officials, some of whom went on to replace Grondona, Teixeria and Leoz at the head of Conmebol, deny their role in the 24-year scheme involving at least $150m in bribes.
As his testimony commenced on Tuesday morning, Burzaco was asked to point out the three defendants in the courtroom while testifying that he bribed all of them.
The witness described a series of meeting at hotels and restaurants in Buenos Aires starting in 2012 in which he helped strike deals for annual six-figure bribes for Marin, who replaced Teixeria as president of Brazil’s soccer federation; Burga, former president of Peru’s soccer federation; and Napout, ex-head of Paraguay’s soccer federation.
After one meeting where arrangements were made to wire Marin a portion of a $2m bribe, Marin “gave me a hug and showed me his gratitude”, Burzaco said. At another, Burga “told me he was happy collecting the bribes”, he said.
After being charged in 2015, following a morning raid on a hotel in Zurich, Burzaco testified that he briefly went into hiding before deciding to turn himself in and cooperate.
“I said, ‘Alejandro, you go to the United States and face justice,’” he said about the decision. “‘Accept responsibility.’”
The former marketing executive also claimed that several of the region’s best-known broadcasters that he had partnered with had paid bribes to football officials to secure rights to games.
This included Fox Sports, partnered with Burzaco in the T&T sports marketing company, which owned the rights to the Copa Libertadores. Fox held a 75% share of T&T from 2005, Burzaco said.
The court was presented with a sham contract written by T&T Sports and signed by the former Fox Pan American Sports chief operating officer James Ganley, which Burzaco said created to pay out $3.7m in bribes to Conmebol officials to keep the rights to the tournament.
Fox Sports denied that the company had been aware of or approved bribes, saying in a statement: “Fox Sports had no operational control of the entity which Burzaco ran.
The entity run by Burzaco was a subsidiary of Fox Pan American Sports, which in 2008, at the time of the contract in question, was majority owned by a private equity firm and under their operational and management control.”
International Football
Players’ union, FIFPRO, wants 20-minute halftimes, more cooling breaks amid extreme heat
Global players’ union FIFPRO is exploring whether extending halftime to 20 minutes and introducing more frequent cooling breaks could better protect players from extreme heat.
Nine of the 16 host cities for the 2026 World Cup face conditions considered “extreme risk” for heat-related illness.
Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Guadalajara, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Monterrey and Philadelphia are expected to face dangerous levels of heat and humidity, posing player safety concerns and fuelling calls for mandatory cooling aids or schedule changes.
FIFPRO’s heat risk assessments are based on wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), a measure combining temperature, humidity, solar radiation and wind speed to estimate how environmental conditions affect the body’s ability to cool itself.
Under FIFPRO guidelines, a WBGT reading above 28 degrees Celsius indicates conditions in which matches should be postponed or rescheduled to protect players’ health.
By comparison, world soccer governing body FIFA’s own guidelines set the extreme risk threshold higher, at 32 degrees Celsius WBGT – but even by that standard, six of the nine cities are still projected to exceed safe limits.
Major League Soccer in the U.S. has a threshold of 29 degrees Celsius WBGT.
“Cooling breaks at the 30th minute and 75th minutes are quite traditional, but from a physiological point of view it does not make sense,” said Vincent Gouttebarge, FIFPRO’s Medical Director.
“Even if you ingest more than 200 millilitres of fluid, you already cannot take it all. So I would definitely like to see some project where we look at the efficacy of perhaps more frequent but shorter cooling breaks – every 15 minutes, rather than only one during each half.”
LONGER HALFTIMES
Gouttebarge also questioned whether the traditional 15-minute halftime interval is sufficient when matches are played in extreme heat.
“You can imagine that halftime of 15 minutes might not be enough in order to decrease the core temperature,” he said.
“It could be a halftime of 20 minutes which would be significant. That has been shown in the laboratory and FIFPRO, together with the national union in Portugal in August, we are going to test this kind of mitigation strategy.”
The urgency of stronger heat protocols became clear at this month’s Club World Cup where two matches — Benfica-Bayern Munich in Charlotte and Chelsea-Esperance in Philadelphia exceeded the WBGT threshold FIFPRO considers unsafe.
“According to our position, those games should have been postponed later that day or rescheduled,” Gouttebarge said.
FIFPRO officials acknowledged that FIFA has responded constructively during the tournament by lowering thresholds for mandatory cooling breaks and improving pitch-side hydration, but stressed that proactive planning is critical.
“FIFA have been quite responsive once the tournament was under way,” said Alex Phillips, FIFPRO General Secretary.
“They have actually modified how they’ve been dealing with heat during the matches based on FIFPRO’s input, which is credit to the work of the team. Obviously, it would have been better if that happened in advance, but it’s better that they have adapted.”
FIFPRO warned that the risks highlighted at the Club World Cup are a preview of what players could face at the expanded 2026 World Cup.
“This is not just affecting the Club World Cup, but also future tournaments either in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world,” said Alexander Bielefeld, FIFPRO Director of Policy & Strategic Relations.
“We need a better balance between commercial interests and the health and safety of players,” he added, referring to earlier kick-off times to accommodate European television audiences.
-Reuters
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Former Manchester United and England midfielder Paul Ince has been charged with drink-driving, police said on Monday.
Ince, who earned 53 caps for England and won two Premier League titles during his six years at United, has been released on bail and will appear in court on July 18.
“The incident involved a black Range Rover which had collided with the central reservation barrier. Officers attended the scene and arrested a 57-year-old man,” the Cheshire police said in a statement.
“Paul Ince, of Quarry Road, Neston, has since been charged with drink-driving.”
Reuters has contacted Ince’s representative for comment.
After retiring as a player, Ince led Milton Keynes Dons to a League Two title in 2007-08. He most recently managed Reading during 2022-23.
-Reuters
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International Football
From garbage collector to Starman of Ancelotti’s Brazil team: the story of Ribeiro
“I was without a team for a year and a half, doing trials… and no club in Brazil wanted me.!” Alex Ribeiro
Alexsandro Victor de Souza Ribeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1999) was, until a few days ago, a semi-unknown to the general public in Brazil.
However, Carlo Ancelotti, impressed by his strong performance against Real Madrid in the Champions League, insisted on calling up the Lille centre-back… and giving him his debut.
Not only that. He started alongside Marquinhos against Ecuador (0-0) and Paraguay (1-0) and helped the Seleçao keep two consecutive clean sheets for the first time in the qualifying rounds.
Alex, as he likes to be called, impressed with his 1.92 meters (6′ 1″) frame and confidence. According to ‘R10Score’, he was the Brazilian player who completed the most actions with the ball (186) and the second with the most cuts (11).
He completed 154 of the 166 passes he made (92% accuracy) and won 12 of the 16 duels he was involved in: 5 of 7 at ground level and 7 of 9 in the air. “A gentleman defender,” boasted the official Ligue 1 Portuguese account.
His path to the elite wasn’t easy. “I don’t think you know this, but this is my first game as a professional in Brazil. Strange, isn’t it? There’s nothing better. To debut in Brazil like this, with a win and qualification,” he boasted after defeating Paraguay.
These first few days with Ancelotti have been unique; I’ll remember them for the rest of my life. I’ve responded well not only to myself, but also to the coach and the Brazilian people. I was able to demonstrate my ability to those who had doubts. Few people give me the opportunity that the manager has given me,” he insists
The Lille centre-back took his first steps in Flamengo’s youth system, where he even met Vinicius.
“When we played against Real Madrid, Vini came up to me and hugged me. He said, ‘I’m glad to see you here, brother.’ That inspired and motivated me even more,” he told ‘Globo Esporte’.
‘Fla’ cut him off. He had to make a living as a street vendor. He also collected trash, especially cans. “I was without a team for a year and a half, doing trials… and no club in Brazil wanted me, so I went to Europe to play in Portugal’s Third Division.”
Praiense (2018-20), Amora (2020-21), and Chaves (2021-22)—the latter already in the Second Division—were his springboard to Lille. The Bulldogs signed him in 2022-23 for €2 million. He has become a more than worthy successor to his compatriot Gabriel Magalhaes.
“Little by little, my name is spreading. My football is reaching everywhere. This includes Brazil,” he said before making his debut with the Seleçao. Now that he’s made it, he has another challenge: “I want to continue it.”
-Marca
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