Writing a book about the scandals of Fifa was a journey into the same maddening contradictions involved in any work investigating football’s modern fractures, but on a global scale. The number of people making so much money out of the game is vastly outnumbered by those participating for the love of it. While the men who enriched themselves were always hard to reach, many other people gave up their time willingly to talk, and to help with research. I am grateful to all of them, and to everybody quoted in the book. Those thanks extend to Sepp Blatter, for agreeing to see me and answer all my questions in an interview, and to Thomas Renggli, who arranged our meeting.
Several Fifa staff were very helpful in responding to questions, however difficult, and I am also particularly grateful to Guy Oliver and Michael Schmalholz at the Fifa museum for providing so much fascinating material and insights into the organisation’s history.
Fellow journalists whose help was very much appreciated included Steve Menary, Valentino Singh and Lasana Liburd in Trinidad, Mark Gleeson and Carlos Amato in South Africa and Jean-Philippe Leclaire in Paris. The encouragement of the legendary Fifa writer and reporter and former World Soccer editor, Keir Radnedge, was very much appreciated. The insights of Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui in Brazil and Paul Darby of Ulster University, were very illuminating. My friend Don Bealing helped very much with translations from German.
Ian Prior, head of sport at the Guardian when I wrote the book, was very supportive, as always; his replacement, Owen Gibson, is a steadfast colleague and as the chief sports correspondent was a brilliant chronicler of the Fifa fall for the paper. Thanks also to the football editor Marcus Christenson and deputy football editor Jon Brodkin for their patience while I was away working on the book, and to all my colleagues at the Guardian for being good people and great to work with.
At Yellow Jersey Press, I am very grateful to Frances Jessop for commissioning this book and for all her hard work and care and attention on it. I’m also thankful to Bill Hamilton for his support, as ever.
Finally, my wife Sarah and lovely daughters Isobel and Emily put up with me again, writing another book, so the most thanks goes to them.