The FIFA Ethics Committee has handed a seven-year ban from all national and international soccer activity to Harold Mayne-Nicholls, former chairman of the Chilean FA and the bid evaluation group for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Mayne-Nicholls was tasked by FIFA to look into the suitability of the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, but it is believed his report was largely ignored.
TMZ asked Zlatan his thoughts on the FIFA scandal, and it went about as well as you'd expect.
"I don't know. It's not my area. I play soccer," Zlatan said.
Hear that? ZLATAN CALLED IT SOCCER. This is further proof that America is taking over the game. It's no longer "football." It's "soccer." Zlatan said so.
Now that one of the best players in the world called it soccer, the can be no stopping it. Get used to soccer, rest of the world.
There is going to be a movie about FIFA.
No, not that godawful United Passions movie, which we here at the18.com couldn’t stand either. This film is about the corruption scandal.
Teaming up to make the film will be Hollywood A-Listers Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, along with Entertainment 360’s Guymon Casady and Darin Friedman. A writer and director are attached as well.
John Oliver made a promise to FIFA sponsors Adidas, McDonald's and Budweiser: if Sepp Blatter resigned, Oliver would wear a pair of ridiculous Adidas shoes, take a bite out of every item on the McDonald's dollar menu and drink a Bud Light Lime and say it was delicious.
John Oliver, evidently, is a man of his word, because he did all of those things, even chugging the whole Bud Light Lime while the studio audience cheered him on.
John Oliver and Jack Warner have been putting on quite the show lately. Warner, you'll recall, is the former CONCACAF head and FIFA executive vice-president who is accused of taking a $10 million bribe, and has claimed he has documents that will make the s***hammer come down on FIFA's head. Warner bragged about these documents on Trinidad and Tobagan TV, so John Oliver bought airtime on the same TV station to ask Warner to release the documents.
According to one of Sepp Blatter's former aids, the outgoing FIFA president might also be the incoming FIFA president.
Klaus Stoehlker, formerly Blatter's election adviser, said this to a Swiss newspaper: "Blatter has built the organisation into a global, highly successful company, and he's a top diplomat. Blatter has a reasonable chance. It now depends on how he behaves in the coming months."
Normally when someone says a movie is the worst movie in the history of everything, you'd take a look at Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" and see that it can get worse. This isn't the case with the FIFA propaganda film "United Passions." It somehow manages to be worse than "The Room" and that's saying something.
Don't get me wrong, Tim Roth nails it--he always does--but literally every other part of the movie fails on literally every single level. No, I am not being hyperbolic.
FIFA communications director Walter De Gregorio appeared on Swiss television and told a joke. After that, he didn't have a job anymore. The Joke?
"FIFA President Sepp Blatter, the General Secretary, and the Communications Director are in a car. Who is driving? The police."
John Oliver took out about four minutes of air-time in Trinidad & Tobago to try to coerce Jack Warner, a native of the islands and former FIFA executive, to turn over incriminating documents to the feds. Warner, who has served as a FIFA Vice President and head of CONCACAF, had bought a similar slice of airtime on the same station to threaten the release of the documents.
Basically, Oliver made a TV commercial to the effect of, "Do it! Do it!"
President Obama addressed the FIFA scandal while speaking Monday.