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Former FIFA president, Havelange dies at 100
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. In the Olympic Games of Beijing 2008, one year before Rio de Janeiro was gaining the right to organize the 2016 Games, Havelange recognized his dream for which the metropolis should receive in his 100th birthday, the appointment under the five hoops.
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FIFA President Gianni Infantino expressed his sympathies: “During his 24 years as FIFA President football became truly global, reaching new territories and bringing the game to all corners of the world”.
The Engenhao stadium in Rio, where the athletics competition of the Rio Olympic Games is now underway, was named in his honor.
Under Havelange the World Cup expanded from a 16-nation event focused on Europe and a few South American sides to the planet-wide sporting festival it has become. FIFA had always been a primarily European nexus of power, and football authorities elsewhere in the world were expected to take their cues from their European betters. A women’s global tournament was also established and the World Cup entry doubled to 32 teams. The 2001 collapse of FIFA’s marketing partner led to revelations that the sport’s officials around the world received bribes in return for lucrative television and sponsorship contracts.
But he resigned as its honorary president amid corruption allegations against him in 2013.
In 1998, he was replaced by Switzerland’s Sepp Blatter but he was soon dogged by corruption allegations.
He was the second longest-serving FIFA’s president, after Jules Rimet, succeeding Stanley Rous in office.
“If you’re a football person, only concerned about the game on the field, you’ll remember him as somebody who extended the world game”, Alan Tomlinson, a professor at the University of Brighton, who co-wrote two books on FIFA’s politics, said in an interview. “Football has become the most important and most respected movement on Earth”.
Later, Havelange won a bronze medal in the sport of water polo with the Brazilian team at the 1951 Pan American Games and also represented Brazil in water polo at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
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Former England striker Gary Lineker caustically said on Twitter on Tuesday: “Joao Havelange, the former Federation Internationale de Football Association president, has died”. He also served as the International Olympic Committee member between 1963 and 2011.