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Qatar are likely be stripped of the 2022 World Cup, according to a former senior figure in their bid team, who turned whistleblower to expose corruption. Phaedra Almajid says the weight of evidence of wrongdoing from her and others will be so overwhelming that FIFA will be left with no option but to find another host. Almajid has been under protective custody of the FBI and she fears her safety will be compromised further if the tournament is taken away from the tiny oil-rich state, who shocked the world by winning the right to stage the 2022 event in 2010....

Sepp Blatter will call extraordinary meeting for a new election to replace him!

Sepp Blatter has resigned as Fifa president amid growing pressure following widespread allegations of corruption at football's world governing body. A new election will be held on May 13th.

Size of 2008 transfers outlined in indictment said to require approval from a small group at FIFA’s highest levels Ten million dollars in transfer payments were sent from FIFA bank accounts in Switzerland to a Caribbean soccer organization in 2008 and used to pay bribes to secure votes for South Africa’s bid to host the World Cup in 2010, the Department of Justice’s indictment alleges, in what could emerge as the most direct connection between the Zurich-based organization’s executive offices and the corruption probe shaking the world’s most popular sport. The size of the transfers, allegedly sent in three installments,...

In November 2010, former president Bill Clinton and then- Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. traveled to Zurich to lobby soccer’s world governing body in support of the U.S. bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Soccer’s popularity was rising in the United States, and a successful bid would bring the most watched sporting event in the world back to the country for the first time in nearly three decades. The Americans were not successful. Instead, Qatar — a small, wealthy emirate on the Persian Gulf — became the first Arab country to be awarded the event. Almost immediately, the...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Thursday that acceding to the Palestinian demand to suspend Israel from FIFA threatened to unravel the international soccer organization. In an interview with reporters in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu commented on Friday’s upcoming vote to oust Israel at the FIFA congress in Zurich, calling it a “blatant intrusion of politics into the field of sports.” According to Netanyahu, who is also an avid soccer fan, “sport has become an arena of goodwill and cooperation between peoples, and because of that an attempt to attack Israel in FIFA will cause FIFA to collapse.” The prime...

Actually, it’s the Swiss who are probing the 2018 World Cup award to Russia, and the US bid was for the 2022 World Cup that went to Qatar.  Vladimir Putin won’t let those facts get in the way of a good anti-American rant, of course. The Russian strongman publicly questioned why the US would have any interest or jurisdiction over a legal argument that doesn’t involve its own citizens, which also turns out to be … not true: Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of meddling in FIFA’s affairs and hinted that it was part of an...