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

Review Spellbinding. A gripping account of how the beautiful game got grotesquely ugly. Highly recommended -- Gary LinekerA 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 JournalRed Card is the meeting of American investigative reporting and real-life cop show. -- Simon Kuper ― FTGripping...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 Product Description '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 EyeThe 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. Book Description Revised and updated with a new afterword: the full story behind the FIFA's headline-grabbing corruption scandal About the Author Ken Bensinger has worked at the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and, since 2014, for BuzzFeed News as a member of the investigations team. Among other topics, he has written about sport, business, immigration, art and politics. Bensinger has twice won the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Finance & Business Reporting, has also won the ASME National Magazine Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He grew up in Seattle, graduated from Duke University and lives in Los Angeles with his family. Red Card, his first book, was named the Telegraph's 2019 Football Book of the Year.