Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World's Biggest Sports Scandal
    Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World's Biggest Sports Scandal
    Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World's Biggest Sports Scandal
    Audiobook11 hours

    Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World's Biggest Sports Scandal

    Written by Ken Bensinger

    Narrated by Jonathan Todd Ross

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal—the biggest corruption case of recent years—involving dozens of countries and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including the World Cup is “an engrossing and jaw-dropping tale of international intrigue…A riveting book” (The New York Times).

    The FIFA case began small, boosted by an IRS agent’s review of an American soccer official’s tax returns. But that humble investigation eventually led to a huge worldwide corruption scandal that crossed continents and reached the highest levels of the soccer’s world governing body in Switzerland.

    “The meeting of American investigative reporting and real-life cop show” (The Financial Times), Ken Bensinger’s Red Card explores the case, and the personalities behind it, in vivid detail. There’s Chuck Blazer, a high-living soccer dad who ascended to the highest ranks of the sport while creaming millions from its coffers; Jack Warner, a Trinidadian soccer official whose lust for power was matched only by his boundless greed; and the sport’s most powerful man, FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who held on to his position at any cost even as soccer rotted from the inside out.

    Remarkably, this corruption existed for decades before American law enforcement officials began to secretly dig, finally revealing that nearly every aspect of the planet’s favorite sport was corrupted by bribes, kickbacks, fraud, and money laundering. Not even the World Cup, the most-watched sporting event in history, was safe from the thick web of corruption, as powerful FIFA officials extracted their bribes at every turn. “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 thirty years” (The Wall Street Journal), Red Card goes beyond the headlines to bring the real story to light.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateJun 12, 2018
    ISBN9781508259237
    Author

    Ken Bensinger

    Ken Bensinger has been a journalist for more than twenty years. He has worked at The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and, since 2014, for BuzzFeed News, as a member of its investigations team, and has written about sports, labor, art, automobiles, and politics, among other topics. He has been a winner of the ASME National Magazine award and the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Finance & Business Reporting, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting. He grew up in Seattle, graduated from Duke University, and lives with his wife, two children, and dog, in Los Angeles. Red Card is his first book.

    Related to Red Card

    Related audiobooks

    Soccer For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Red Card

    4/5

    28 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Deeply enjoyable for fans of soccer old and new.
    • 5/5
      Thanks for the pointer . . . . . .
    • 5/5
      This is an enthralling work. As someone who is not too into soccer outside the World Cup, it was hard at times to see just why FIFA was such a powerful organization. But as the narrative moves forward, the way so many of these men - and it is almost universally men - could be the heroes of their own stories while being so comfortably corrupt, was fascinating. A great narrator and a wonderful book.
    • 5/5
      Great, book extraodunary investugative work. I loved each abd every page of the book
    • 3/5
      I found this book looking for something else. Glad I gave it a try. I found it to be somewhat interesting given the world wide scope of the investigation, the coordination of various agencies, and the intricacies of assembling the case. If the book had been much longer, I probably would have lost interest. Anyway, I thought it was a good read, particularly if you like soccer (football).
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this. I've read most of Andrew Jennings' books and have always been left with the understanding of widespread corruption among FIFA but I couldn't have put it into words (Bensinger is right in staying Jennings needs a good editor to go through his work). But Bensinger's book has made it all crystal clear for me.The corruption isn't widespread so much an intrinsic aspect of FIFA as it now stands. The book was well written, the characters came to life and the entire narrative was well structured. Bensinger does a very good job of clarifying and explaining the complex nature of the corruption.I'll recommend this to anyone who has any interest in football (or corruption!).