August 16 – Former FIFA president Joao Havelange has passed away, aged 100. In hospital since July with respiratory problems, he died this morning of pneumonia in a Rio de Janeiro hospital.
The Brazilian was the seventh president of FIFA taking over from England’s Sir Stanley Rous in 1974, and ruling for 24 years before handing on to Sepp Blatter in 1998.
He served as International Olympic Committee member from 1963 until his resignation in 2011.
Qualified as a lawyer, Havelange was also an athlete who swam for Brazil at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and played Water Polo for Brazil at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952.
Havelange oversaw the first stages of the commercialisation of FIFA and identified the copportunity for the expansion of the World Cup and the introduction of world youth competitions.
Working closely with ISL and Sepp Blatter as his general secretary, Havelange increased the size of the World Cup from 16 to 32 teams, introduced a World Cup for women, gained a place for women’s soccer in the Summer Olympics and built up the marketing and television rights business.
His relationship with ISL was always too close for comfort and was ultimately the cause of his reputational downfall.
In July 2012 a Swiss prosecutor’s report alleged that, during his time on FIFA’s exeutive committee, he and his son-in-law Ricardo Texeira received more than $41 million in bribes in connection with the award of World Cup marketing rights.
He resigned his position as honorary president of FIFA in April 2013 for “health and personal reasons”.
Since 2012 Havelange had suffered health problems and was hospitalised on a number of occasions for respiratory problems. He lived long enough to see the Olympics open in his home city of Rio de Janeiro, but not long enough to see them end. Perhaps apposite for a man who despite the corruption and controversy surrounding his commercial sports dealings, was actually an Olympian in sporting spirit if not commercial reality.
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