João Havelange served as a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1963 to 2011, him being the longest-serving active member upon his resignation.
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Havelange also served as the head of Brazil’s swimming federation and spent nearly 50 years as a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
During his tenure from 1974 to 1988, the World Cup expanded from 16 to 32 teams, added the Women’s World Cup and brought new countries into FIFA.as well.
However, his career was also mired in controversy over bribery allegations.
He helped to transform the group and its flagship event, the World Cup, into a multibillion-dollar business. Officially he left for health reasons, but his departure was two days before he was due to face an ethics investigation into allegations he had taken bribes to funnel contracts to a marketing company called ISL. However, he resigned the position in April 2013.
The son of a Belgian father and a Brazilian mother, Havelange was a top-notch athlete before becoming a sports administrator.
Havelange was able to parlay what he learned in Brazilian sport to build a coalition among football associations in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Four years later, he became president of the now-defunct Brazilian Sports Confederation (CBD), which brought together 24 sports including soccer. He ran world soccer’s governing body “with a combination of autocratic rigidity and progressive reform”.
The Rio-born sports executive was the second longest-serving Federation Internationale de Football Association president. But that figure increased nearly tenfold over the next two decades as Fifa’s organisational responsibilities and commercial interests grew.
He headed the Brazilian football confederation for almost two decades, when Brazil’s national team won its first three World Cup titles in 1958, 1962 and 1970. Over that time, he saw Brazil become three-time football world champions at the 1958, 1962 and 1970 World Cup finals.
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