When first published, Badfellas was lauded as a ground-breaking work of critical sport sociology that exposed the systematic corruption at the heart of world football. Now re-issued with new chapters that cover the current crisis and demonstrate the continuing importance of critical, investigative methods in sport studies, this is essential reading for anybody looking to understand Blatter's rise and fall.

World football is in crisis. The corruption scandal engulfing FIFA is arguably the biggest story in the history of modern sport and a watershed for sport governance. More than a decade ago, John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson laid the foundations for subsequent investigations with the publication of Badfellas, a groundbreaking work of critical sport sociology that exposed the systematic corruption at the heart of world football. It was a book that FIFA and Sepp Blatter tried to ban. Now re-issued to combine the original contents of Badfellas with new chapters covering the current crisis, this book points to the ways in which FIFA’s new administration can learn from the Blatter story. The prequel traces the course of Sugden and Tomlinson’s game-changing investigation into FIFA, while the sequel updates the FIFA story from 2002 onwards and provides a chronology of crises and scandals within the FIFA narrative. Demonstrating the vital importance of critical investigative methods in sport studies, Football, Corruption and Lies: Revisiting Badfellas, the book FIFA tried to ban is essential reading for anybody looking to understand Blatter’s rise and fall.

World football's governing body FIFA has claimed credit for the success of one of the world's greatest and most lucrative sporting spectacles, the football World Cup, and the expansion of the world game more generally. Yet, as Asia stages its first World Cup, behind the scenes the administration of the world game is in shambles. Though the President of FIFA, Joseph Sepp Blatter, secured a second term at a heated FIFA Congress on the eve of Japan/Korea 2002, internecine rivalries persist at the heart of the Organization, and FIFA finances continue to be veiled in secrecy. In Badfellas, the tale of FIFA's expanding fortunes, recurrent crises and internal rivalries is told, from the growth of the World Cup from its politically driven origins in Uruguay in 1930 to its status as one of the world's most lucrative media spectacles. It details how the interests of small third-world countries have been betrayed as the FIFA family expanded and reveals how an organization founded by seven European nations has come to control the future of the game in more than 200 countries in the post-colonial world.

THE STORY THAT BROUGHT DOWN FIFA'S SEPP BLATTER. 'With every page of this book, we see just why FIFA desperately needs a complete overhaul' - Sun When FIFA awarded the tiny desert state of Qatar the rights to host the 2022 World Cup, the news was greeted with disbelief and allegations of corruption. How had a country with almost no football infrastructure or tradition, a high terror risk and searing summer temperatures of 50C beaten more established countries with stronger bids? The story behind the Qatari success soon developed into one of the greatest sporting scandals of our time. And when the Sunday Times Insight team received a cache of hundreds of millions of documents from a whistleblower, the contents of the FIFA Files became a global sensation, unearthing the corruption that lay at the heart of the bidding process. Now in this remarkable new book by the Sunday Times journalists at the centre of the investigation, Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, comes the most comprehensive account yet of what happened and who was involved. Above all, it explains why, despite all the evidence, FIFA continues to support Qatar - even to the extent of publishing an edited and abbreviated report into the process that was immediately denounced by its original author. Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, The Ugly Game is undoubtedly the biggest sporting story of our times. 'Never before has bribe-giving been documented in such graphic detail' - Independent

Greedy, vain and ambitious personalities dominate English football. From the author of devastating exposes of Mohamed Fayed, Richard Branson and, most recently, Geoffrey Robinson, BROKEN DREAMS is a superbly incisive account of how self-interested individuals, adopting questionable and predatory business methods, are exploiting the sport of football to earn billions of pounds and huge glory. Focusing on key figures including Terry Venables, Ken Bates, David Dein, Harry Redknapp, Rio Ferdinand and other famous agents, chairmen and managers, Tom Bower exposes the money, the politics, and the vicious battles behind the beautiful game. For the first time a non-sports writer reveals the vanity and greed which endanger the national sport.

The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal—the biggest corruption case of recent years—involving dozens of countries and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including the World Cup is “an engrossing and jaw-dropping tale of international intrigue…A riveting book” (The New York Times). The FIFA case began small, boosted by an IRS agent’s review of an American soccer official’s tax returns. But that humble investigation eventually led to a huge worldwide corruption scandal that crossed continents and reached the highest levels of the soccer’s world governing body in Switzerland. “The meeting of American investigative reporting and real-life cop show” (The Financial Times), Ken Bensinger’s Red Card explores the case, and the personalities behind it, in vivid detail. There’s Chuck Blazer, a high-living soccer dad who ascended to the highest ranks of the sport while creaming millions from its coffers; Jack Warner, a Trinidadian soccer official whose lust for power was matched only by his boundless greed; and the sport’s most powerful man, FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who held on to his position at any cost even as soccer rotted from the inside out. Remarkably, this corruption existed for decades before American law enforcement officials began to secretly dig, finally revealing that nearly every aspect of the planet’s favorite sport was corrupted by bribes, kickbacks, fraud, and money laundering. Not even the World Cup, the most-watched sporting event in history, was safe from the thick web of corruption, as powerful FIFA officials extracted their bribes at every turn. “A gripping white-collar crime thriller that, in its scope and human drama, ranks with some of the best investigative business books of the past thirty years” (The Wall Street Journal), Red Card goes beyond the headlines to bring the real story to light.

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year NCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scandals, with stops at Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Missouri, BYU, LSU, Texas A&M and many more, The System explores and exposes the complex, and perhaps broken, machine that churns behind the glamour of college football. With a New Afterword.

'A superb go-to guide for anyone seeking context on why Qatar won the 2022 World Cup bid' Daily Express The Fall of the House of Fifa is the definitive story of Fifa's rise and the most spectacular fall sport has ever seen. For forty years Joao Havelange and then Sepp Blatter presided over a Fifa now plagued with scandal - dawn raids, FBI investigations, allegations of money laundering, industrial-scale bribery, racketeering, tax evasion, vote-buying and theft. Now David Conn, football's most respected investigative journalist, chronicles the extraordinary history and staggering scale of corruption. He paints revealing portraits of the men at the centre of Fifa - the power brokers, the indicted, the legends like Franz Beckenbauer and Michel Platini - and puts the allegations to Blatter himself in an extended interview.

Sport is a global phenomenon engaging billions of people and generating annual revenues of more than US$ 145 billion. Problems in the governance of sports organisations, fixing of matches and staging of major sporting events have spurred action on many fronts. Yet attempts to stop corruption in sport are still at an early stage. The Global Corruption Report (GCR) on sport is the most comprehensive analysis of sports corruption to date. It consists of more than 60 contributions from leading experts in the fields of corruption and sport, from sports organisations, governments, multilateral institutions, sponsors, athletes, supporters, academia and the wider anti-corruption movement. This GCR provides essential analysis for understanding the corruption risks in sport, focusing on sports governance, the business of sport, planning of major events, and match-fixing. It highlights the significant work that has already been done and presents new approaches to strengthening integrity in sport. In addition to measuring transparency and accountability, the GCR gives priority to participation, from sponsors to athletes to supporters an essential to restoring trust in sport.

A portion of the proceeds from Front Row Seat will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Disease research and the Positive Coaching Alliance to help coaches lead and develop America's future leaders..America's youth sports industry has changed dramatically over the past two decades. The days of playing for your town or local YMCA team, be it baseball, soccer, basketball or lacrosse were coming to an end. There would soon be an arms race - how do I get my child on the best travel team, should I hire a personal trainer, which college showcases should my child attend, should I subscribe to a recruiting service, and so on. Youth sports had become big business.An opportunity presented itself to me to invest in a sports event business and, soon, other opportunities followed. Over the next five years or so, I was invested; personally and financially in the industry. My view and approach to the youth sports market was pretty simple - first and foremost, exceed customer expectations; deliver great experiences and value; and reinforce positive values and sportsmanship. With the advent of social media, our customers became our marketers; moms, dads and kids sharing our branded content on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, respectively. The founder of a youth sports company reached out to me and told me that he had heard good things about me and said he would like to get together and tell me more about his company. He seemed to know a fair amount about my investments and activities in the sports space. He was a bit vague about why he was contacting me, however, it felt like a good networking opportunity and you never know where meetings like this can lead. I had strong opinions about the youth sports market and a fully developed investment thesis - I was confident that there was tremendous opportunity both from an investment perspective and to provide customers with better-quality experiences. Perhaps this company would prove to be a good opportunity, a platform to execute the strategy. I agreed to meet with him. I could never have imagined what the next two years of my life would be like. I quickly found myself wrapped in a web of lies, cover-ups, and dealing with individuals driven by ego and greed. Never in my life did I think I would be dealing with an international criminal investigation led by the U.S. Department of Justice. I was fearing for my family's safety and fighting for the rights of our employees and customers all at the same time. If that wasn't enough, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.I had a front row seat to dozens of real-time business case studies; accounting issues; civil and criminal litigation; and my own path to acceptance and rediscovering what matters most.