Johannesburg, Aug.17: Former FIFA president Joao Havelange, who was undergoing treatment for pneumonia, has recently passed away at the Samaritano Hospital in Rio de Janeiro.
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With outsider backing strong enough as to be impossible to ignore, Havelange managed to depose Englishman Sir Stanley Rous as President in 1974. 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. In 1955, he became a member of the Brazilian National Olympic Committee, a post he held until 1963 when he was elected a member of the International Olympic Committee.
Havelange had a career in swimming before moving into politics.
Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer said in a statement that sport had lost one of its “most expressive leaders”. “I extend my solidarity to his family and friends at this hard time”.
Ricardo Teixeira, the former president of the Brazilian football confederation, said: “He was the great creator of football as we know it today, from a financial and technical standpoint”.
How much exactly Havelange and then-son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira took is not known, but ISL records showed payments to accounts to the two Brazilians totaled nearly $22 million in nine years (1992-2000) and they paid back $6.1 million in a confidential settlement. What Havelange wanted he usually got, and he decided after soccer’s popularity at the 1984 Olympics that the World Cup needed to come to the United States.
Havelange was the brains behind the World Cup growing into a 32-team competition.
A number of controversies, however, marred Havelange’s legacy. Football gave him so much.
Speaking to the BBC World Service, Blatter said: “I am very grateful to him, he was my teacher, a teacher with confidence, that is why later I was managing Federation Internationale de Football Association in the same spirit, [with] trust and confidence”.
In 2012, a report found that Havelange and his son-in-law had received a total of over 41 million USA dollars in bribes linked to the distribution of World Cup marketing rights.
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Havelange resigned in December 2011 as a member of the International Olympic Committee just days before its leadership was expected to suspend him and rule on claims that he took a $1 million kickback. “Yes, you read that correctly”.
