
The Ugly Game
The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup
- 480 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
The Ugly Game
The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup
About this book
"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.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Chapter 1: A Surprising Proposal
- Chapter 2: Brother Jack, Der Kaiser and a Man with a Parrot
- Chapter 3: Bagmen and Brown Envelopes: The Campaign Begins
- Chapter 4: A Corrupt Official Called Seedy
- Chapter 5: How to Score Points
- Chapter 6: Cocktails, Conspiracy and a Million-dollar Dinner
- Chapter 7: A Crimefighter in Cowboy Boots Comes to Zurich
- Chapter 8: My Enemy’s Enemy
- Chapter 9: Who Is Sim Hong Chye?
- Chapter 10: The Casino King, the Thai Voter and the Gas Deal
- Chapter 11: Spies, Siberia and the Psychic Octopus
- Chapter 12: Sex, Lies and Videotape
- Chapter 13: Only God Knows What You Do for the Brothers
- Chapter 14: In Every Crisis, an Opportunity
- Chapter 15: Who Watches?
- Chapter 16: A Fine Lesson in Machiavellian Expertise
- Chapter 17: No Pause on the Path of Treason
- Chapter 18: The Riches of Ruin
- Chapter 19: The Deal
- Chapter 20: I Have Seen the Ugly Face of Football
- Chapter 21: After the Story, the Civil War
- Epilogue
- The Ugly Game Cast List
- Acknowledgements
- Photographs
- About Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert
- Copyright