Lords of Soccer

Today’s episode is all about hope. The stunning success of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team offered FIFA a roadmap to a better way of doing business, one that promised soaring profits while embracing the organization’s core mission: to spread soccer and fair play around the globe. Instead, FIFA relegated the women’s game to second-class status even after seeing record crowds. In choosing to stick with its old corrupt ways, FIFA lost the one thing it cares about most: money. But women’s soccer still offers the last, best hope for a better FIFA.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After spending millions of dollars they didn’t have to build World Cup infrastructure, and disappearing anyone opposed to their lavish plans, Argentina’s military junta turns its eyes on an even bigger prize – a World Cup victory on its home soil in 1978. How far would General Videla and his henchmen go to win? And would FIFA ignore their blatant efforts to rig the World Cup?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, you’ll hear how the Lords of Soccer abused their positions to prop up and promote a violent dictatorship in Chile, all in the name of profit.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An organization like FIFA does not become corrupt overnight. So how did it happen? Well, long before FIFA became stuff of criminal lore, soccer’s governing body was simply known to be racist and morally corrupt. From supporting South Africa’s racist apartheid regime to propping up authoritarian dictators, FIFA’s so-called Golden Years were more blood red than gold. At the top of the pyramid for much of this, an Englishman named Stanley Rous.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In December 2010, FIFA President Sepp Blatter, surrounded by celebrities and politicians from around the globe, announced that Russia and Qatar would host the next two World Cup tournaments. The news shook the world. The choice of two authoritarian regimes, with troubling human rights records and little if any soccer infrastructure, set off alarm bells. How could this happen? Among those asking the question, federal agents in the United States who decided to take a closer look at soccer’s governing body.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chuck Blazer was one of the most powerful men in international soccer - or football, as most of the world knows it. As a member of FIFA’s executive committee, he was among an elite few who managed the World Cup, the globe’s ultimate sporting competition. To his fellow Lords of Soccer, Blazer was loyal; and like many of them, he was utterly corrupt. In November 2011, two federal agents stopped the eccentric sports executive outside his Trump Tower apartment. They offered him a deal - spill the tea on FIFA’s secret world of bribes and money laundering or go to prison for tax fraud. Blazer took the deal, setting in motion the largest international corruption investigation in history.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.