Full Description
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.
Contents
Preface to 2016 Edition/Re-issue
Prequel: Badfellas Begins - Critical sociology and the purging of FIFA
Badfellas: FIFA Family at War
Preface [2003]
1. Blattergate - Blatter consolidates power
2. The Blazer-and-Slacks Brigade - FIFA's amateur roots
3. Goodbye, Colonel Blimp - Shifting political landscapes
4. The Big Man - Havelange and the transformation of FIFA
5. The Predator and the Protégé - Doing the business for FIFA
6. The Bounty Hunter - The American way
7. The Big Boss - Eastern horizons
8. A Rumble in the Jungle - Johansson and the scramble for Africa
9. From Protégé to President - Blatter takes the throne
10. The Politics of the Belly - Garnering votes and gaining loyalty
11. Tout Heaven - Tickets, markets and corruption
12. The Best Club in the World - Cocooning the FIFA Family
13. Bidding wars - Winners and losers in the World Cup hosting game
14. The Terminator - Blatter cleans out FIFA House
15. Fifaland - Imagining world football's future
Sequel: Badfellas on the Run
Coda: The End of a Dynasty - Badfellas re-formed?
Acronyms
Cast List
Index
