Red Card

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

By: Ken Bensinger

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

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.

Some weird sounding recording edits

When listening to this book you will easily be able to hear points in the text that the reader was asked to re-record. The edits sound vastly different and can be distracting. Nonetheless this is a good book detailing the incredibly deep investigation into FIFA corruption.

Phenomenal Soccer Story, mind moggling corruption case

For fans of soccer and for peope interested in stories of criminal abuse of the global financial system, this book has all the elements you could want. I really feel like this is a part II to Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World. It’s incredible how soccer corruption so closely intertwines with global politics and how the same names of famous (or infamous) politicians keep popping up. Highly recommend!

I couldn't imagine such corruption

The USA assists the Beautiful Game. Really interesting look at financial crimes and brazen theft.

Great true crime story

This is a deeply researched crime story that anyone, not just sports fans, will enjoy.

A Delightful Caper

The characters in this are whacky, the narrative is well-paced and filled with plum phrases and there are even some appearances from the Russians and former spy Christopher Steele. It reads at points like a spy novel and at others like a mafia-style cat and mouse game a la The Untouchables. The narrator screws up a couple pronunciations of football clubs, but nothing to lose a star over.