PROFILE: Brazilian sport's Havelange, from glory to disgrace?

By Diana Renee Dec 5, 2011, 22:02 GMT

Rio de Janeiro- Joao Havelange has been for decades one of the most powerful men in the world of sport.

But the Brazilian who led football governing body FIFA 1974-98 and turned it into a money-making machine is today, at age 95, on the edge of a precipice.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed Monday that Havelange had resigned as a member. He was due to hear on Thursday the outcome of an IOC ethics committee investigation into allegations that, as head of FIFA, he received kickbacks from the collapsed sports marketing agency ISL.

Havelange had been part of the IOC since 1963, and he was its only lifetime member.

He has resigned for health reasons, the IOC said.

However, Havelange's move is reportedly an effort to prevent an expulsion from the committee, which has been investigating corruption allegations against him for six months.

A disgraceful exit would have been a very tough blow for Havelange, born in Rio de Janeiro on May 8, 1916, the son of a Belgian who made money off the sale of firearms and ammunition.

In a life that has lasted well over nine decades, Jean-Marie Faustin Godefroid de Havelange, better known by the Brazilian version of his name, Joao Havelange, knew one success after another.

His ties to sport started in his teenage years, when he played football in the junior teams of Fluminense. He later turned to swimming and water polo, and he was even part of the Brazilian Olympic team in Berlin 1936.

When he retired from competitive sport, he took on the leadership of the Brazilian Sports Confederation (CBD), before reaching the presidency of FIFA in 1974 and launching a 'revolution' within it.

'When I arrived at FIFA, there were only 20 dollars in the treasury. When I left the position, there were 4 billion dollars,' he liked to recall.

The key to this change lay in Havelange's success in selling football as a 'product'. Throughout his time in office, he expanded the organization's membership, which currently stands at 208 countries - more than the United Nations - as well as increasing from 16 to 32 the number of national teams that take part in the World Cup, and attracting powerful sponsors, including multinationals like Coca Cola, Nike, Budweiser and McDonalds.

As a result of this, FIFA - currently led by Havelange's hand-picked successor Joseph Blatter - now earns around 250 billion dollars per year.

Havelange also attained major clout at the IOC, and he used that leverage to bring the 2016 Olympics to his city, Rio de Janeiro. As he campaigned to host the Games, he sent every other IOC member a personal letter asking them to allow him to see the Olympics at home on the very year he is set to turn 100.

For a man whose life was until now a history of success, the IOC investigation of corruption allegations was a serious setback, even as he worked to get his ex-son-in-law, Brazilian Football Confederation president Ricardo Teixeira, elected FIFA president in 2015.

The exit from the IOC may not be the last of the dark clouds looming over Havelange. FIFA has also vowed to make public in the coming weeks the results of an investigation by Swiss police into the bribery scandal of the 1990s, when Havelange was at the helm.

According to the BBC, both Havelange and Teixeira are apparently among the members of the FIFA Executive Committee who received illegal funds from ISL. Should these allegations be confirmed, they would be a major blow to Teixeira's political aspirations - but an even bigger one to Havelange's image.

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