Red Card: FIFA and the Fall of the Most Powerful Men in Sports

(Paperback, Main)

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'Gripping...Bensinger's impeccably sourced account serves as a sharp reminder of the gargantuan levels of largesse and excess during Fifa's bad, bad days - as well as a warning that not enough has been done to prevent them returning.' - Sean Ingle, Guardian

'Bensinger deftly deploys novelistic devices to turn it into a real-life detective thriller...[it] resembles John Grisham' - Private Eye

The story of FIFA's fall from grace has it all: power, betrayal, revenge, sports stars, hustlers, corruption, sex and phenomenal quantities of money, all set against exotic locales stretching from Caribbean beaches to the formal staterooms of the Kremlin and the sun-blasted streets of Doha, Qatar.

In Red Card, investigative journalist Ken Bensinger takes a journey to FIFA's dark heart. He introduces the flamboyant villains of the piece - the FIFA kingpins who flaunted their wealth in private jets and New York's grandest skyscrapers - and the dogged team of American FBI and IRS agents, headed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who finally brought them to book. Providing fresh insights on a scandal which has gripped the world, he shows how greed and arrogance brought down the most powerful institution in sporting history.

A wild, gritty, gripping, and at times blackly comic story, Red Card combines world-class journalism with the pace of a thriller.

Reviews

Spellbinding. A gripping account of how the beautiful game got grotesquely ugly. Highly recommended -- Gary Lineker
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 30 years. * Wall Street Journal *
Red Card is the meeting of American investigative reporting and real-life cop show. -- Simon Kuper * FT *
Gripping...Bensinger's impeccably sourced account serves as a sharp reminder of the gargantuan levels of largesse and excess during Fifa's bad, bad days - as well as a warning that not enough has been done to prevent them returning. -- Sean Ingle * Guardian *

Author Bio

Ken Bensinger is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and an award-winning investigative reporter for Buzzfeed News. He is based in Los Angeles.

Find him on Twitter @kenbensinger