Former Fifa president Joao Havelange has died in Rio de Janeiro, aged 100.
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Havelange resigned as honorary president of FIFA in 2013 after an internal report by its ethics committee revealed he had received bribes along with two other FIFA members, including his former son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira, who followed him in governing Brazilian football.
He resigned as honorary president of Federation Internationale de Football Association in 2013 after a report found he had taken bribes.
In 2015, several of the sport’s officials, who formed FIFA’s leadership group during Havelange’s reign, were named among those charged in a sprawling US Justice Department indictment, which alleged more than two decades of corruption in soccer.
The United States was awarded the 1994 World Cup during Havelange’s rule, in 1988.
With outsider backing strong enough as to be impossible to ignore, Havelange managed to depose Englishman Sir Stanley Rous as President in 1974.
When Havelange was elected president, Fifa’s Zurich headquarters housed just 12 staff members.
Former vice-president of FIFA Jack Warner has labeled former FIFA president Joao Havelange, who died yesterday, as “the man who changed the face of football forever”. Havelange also created the women’s World Cup.
The Brazilian competed for his nation at the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games in swimming, as well as playing water polo for the nation at Helsinki 1956. But Havelange’s bid for the top job at FIFA came during his country’s emergence as a world power in football, dovetailing, not coincidentally, with hype surrounding Pelé reaching a fever pitch.
By the time Havelange left as president, Africa and South America had five places each at the World Cup, Asia four and North and Central America three.
Critics say that corruption was as much Havelange’s legacy as the successful internationalization of football.
Havelange was hospitalized in 2012 for an ankle infection and again in 2014 and 2015 due to respiratory problems for a lung infection before being struck down with pneumonia last month.
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Following his resignation, Havelange was investigated over bribery allegations.
