The Ugly Game: The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup

by Heidi Blake, Jonathan Calvert

Overview

“The book that reminds you exactly what’s wrong with FIFA” (Esquire UK): This meticulously reported account by two award-winning, investigative journalists at Britain’s The Sunday Times explains how the 2022 World Cup was secured for Qatar—a key element in the ongoing, international FIFA controversy.

When the tiny desert state of Qatar won the rights to host the 2022 World Cup, the news was greeted with shock and disbelief. How had a country with almost no soccer infrastructure or tradition, a high terror risk, and searing summer temperatures, beaten more established countries with stronger bids? The story behind the Qatari success soon developed into a global news sensation.

In 2014 The Sunday Times Insight team in the UK spilled the secrets of a bombshell cache of hundreds of millions of secret documents, which were leaked by a whistleblower. In forensic detail, they reported how Mohamed Bin Hammam, Qatar’s top soccer official, used his position to help secure the votes that Qatar needed to win the bid. The investigative team spent three months painstakingly piecing together Bin Hammam’s activities and reporting on cash handouts, lavish junkets, and evidence of payments to soccer officials around the world.

Now in this remarkable book by The Sunday Times journalists at the center of the investigation, Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, comes a comprehensive account of what happened and who was involved. A bestseller in the UK, The Ugly Game is undoubtedly the biggest sporting story of recent times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501132964
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	06/27/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Heidi Blake is a multi-award-winning investigative journalist. She was assistant editor of The Sunday Times, attached to the Insight team, until spring 2015 when she became BuzzFeed’s UK investigations editor. She lives in south-east London.

Jonathan Calvert has worked for various newspapers in a long and distinguished career as an investigative journalist. He is the longest-serving editor of the Insight team at The Sunday Times, having held the role for more than ten years, He lives in west London.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 A Surprising Proposal 5

2 Brother jack, Der Kaiser and a Man with a Parrot 30

3 Bagmen and Brown Envelopes: The Campaign Begins 63

4 A Corrupt Official Called Seedy 81

5 Plow to Score Points 86

6 Cocktails, Conspiracy and a Million-dollar Dinner 114

7 A Crimefighter in Cowboy Boots Comes to Zurich 127

8 My Enemy's Enemy 156

9 Who Is Sim Hong Chye? 181

10 The Casino King, the Thai Voter and the Gas Deal 188

11 Spies, Siberia and the Psychic Octopus 200

12 Sex, lies and Videotape 222

13 Only God Knows What You Do for the Brothers 245

14 In Every Crisis, an Opportunity 256

15 Who Watches? 268

16 A Fine Lesson In Machiavellian Expertise 276

17 No Pause on the Path of Treason 297

18 The Riches of Ruin 331

19 The Deal 350

20 I Have Seen the Ugly Face of Football 389

21 After the Story, the Civil War 420

Epilogue 454

The Ugly Game Cast List 466

Acknowledgements 471

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/01/2015
In 2010, FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football Association) awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a small, oil-rich nation with no soccer stadiums or soccer history—a decision that shocked sports fans. Rumors and accusations of bribery and enormous payoffs flew throughout soccer, and all signs pointed to corruption at the highest levels of FIFA. Iron-fisted president Joseph "Sepp" Blatter naturally denied any wrongdoing but when two members of the London-based Sunday Times insight team gained access to millions of FIFA documents, the ugly truth came out—the organizataion and its officials were guilty of the worst kind of corruption. Under the byline of coauthors Blake and Calvert, the Times began publishing the sad story in June 2014. In a narrative that at times reads like a spy novel, the authors lay out the entire scheme, focusing on Qatari billionaire Mohammed bin Hammam, the supreme fixer behind the sweeping scandal. VERDICT Although its vast litany of names creates confusion on occasion, this complex account of corruption is precisely detailed. Soccer's shame is the reader's gain as Blake and Calvert write an engrossing exposé.—Boyd Childress, formerly with Auburn Univ. Libs., AL

Library Journal

2015-08-29
The story of corruption surrounding the awarding of the 2022 World Cup, "worth billions of dollars and priceless prestige to the victor."By this point, there are few who doubt that the international governing body of soccer, FIFA, is utterly, uncontrollably, uncontrovertibly, and undoubtedly corrupt. It is an organization without scruples, larger than the United Nations in membership and beholden to a small number of willful men. The granting of the 2022 World Cup to the tiny desert nation of Qatar was an act of both folly and hubris. Readers would be hard-pressed to find anyone who pays attention to global soccer to believe that awarding the country the world's most popular sport's premier event was anything but a triumph of graft over merit. It is this story that Buzzfeed U.K. investigations editor Blake and Sunday Times Insight team editor Calvert investigate, and a good portion of the narrative is compelling. However, their reportage hangs on such a thin and fragile reed of evidence that even if it rings true, it does not carry the fundamental burden of proving the truth. Relying on the testimony of shady anonymous interlocutors, drawing on broad but unverifiable inferences, providing no footnotes or endnotes or even a bibliography, the authors tell the world what it wants to hear without proving why it is worth hearing. FIFA is an easy target, and the authors take plenty of justifiable shots at the organization. But it will be up to future writers and scholars not just to take aim at the giant bull's-eye, but to hit it with greater accuracy. Thinking one knows the truth is not enough, no matter how many anonymous sources tell you otherwise. Being right is important. Being able to document that rightness (or righteousness) is vital. This book lives up to the former but disappoints on the latter.

Kirkus Reviews