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João Havelange, who as president of Fifa for two decades transformed the governing body into a multibillion-pound business and a hotbed for subsequent corruption that damaged its reputation, has died. He was 100.
The Samaritano hospital in Rio de Janeiro said he died early on Tuesday, while Rio was hosting the Olympic Games. In 2009, Havelange led Rio’s bid presentation to the IOC in Copenhagen by inviting the members to vote to “join me in celebrating my 100th birthday’” at the 2016 Games in Brazil.
Havelange expanded the World Cup from 16 to 32 teams and made it one of sport’s most important events. He organised six World Cups as Fifa president from 1974 to 1998, when Sepp Blatter replaced him. He secured lucrative broadcast deals, brought nations into Fifa and created the Women’s World Cup.
With more cash for football also came widespread financial wrongdoing by its top officials, including Havelange. In 2013, the Fifa ethics court judge Hans-Joachim Eckert said Havelange’s conduct had been “morally and ethically reproachable”. Havelange was never punished and was allowed to resign his then honorary presidency.
Prior to that, Havelange also resigned in December 2011 as a member of the International Olympic Committee just days before its leadership was expected to suspend him and rule on claims that he took a $1m kickback.
Three of Fifa’s most notorious officials – his son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira, Chuck Blazer and Jack Warner – joined Fifa’s executive committee during Havelange’s presidency. All three were subsequently swept up in corruption investigations by Swiss and US authorities last year that also brought the end of Blatter’s 17-year presidency. Teixeira and Warner have denied any wrongdoing while Blazer pleaded guilty to charges of bribery, money laundering and tax evasion and was banned from all football-related activity for life in 2015.
Fifa was a small organisation with about a dozen employees when Havelange took over at its Zurich headquarters in 1974.
“I found an old house and $20 in the kitty,” Havelange told Fifa’s website.
“On the day I departed 24 years later, I left property and contracts worth over $4bn. Not too bad, I’d say.”
He was re-elected president six times, capitalising on his contact-building across world football. Fifa’s membership expanded by nearly one third, to more than 200 nations and territories, under Havelange. China was readmitted in 1980 having left the organisation in 1958.
“I clocked 26,000 hours in the air, the equivalent of spending three years in an airplane,” Havelange said.
“The only country I never visited was Afghanistan, because they wouldn’t let me in.”
The son of a Belgian father and a Brazilian mother, Havelange was a top athlete before becoming a sports administrator. He swam for Brazil at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and played for their water polo team at the Helsinki Games in 1952.
He headed the Brazilian football confederation for nearly two decades, when the national team won their first three World Cups in 1958, 1962 and 1970.
Havelange was the first non-European head of Fifa and its longest serving president, stepping down at age 82.
In a 1999 survey by the IOC, Havelange was voted among the top three sports leaders of the 20th century, behind the former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and the modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin. He joined the IOC in 1963 and the Engenhão stadium in Rio, where many of the Olympic events are currently under way, was named in his honour. – Guardian
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