Brazilian Football Governance

Writing at Play the Game, Jens Sejer Andersen has a characteristically excellent piece on the current changes occurring in Brazilian football governance following the surprising resignation last week of Ricardo Teixeira as head of the Brazilian Football Confederation.  Here is an excerpt:

Since President Dilma Roussef took office in January 2011, distancing herself from corruption in general and Teixeira in particular, political pressure on Teixeira to leave has been mounting.

Teixeira has always been controversial, narrowly escaping sanctions after congress investigations at the beginning of the millennium, and is presently under suspicion for several cases of fraud, including one involving a national team friendly with Portugal in 2008. Why his 11-year-old daughter Antonia should receive a one million USD gift from a family friend, FC Barcelona’s President Sandro Rosell, last year also remains unclear.

Internationally, Teixeira is tainted as one of the main beneficiaries of the ISL corruption scheme by which 140 million Swiss Francs were paid out as bribes mainly to top FIFA executives in the 1990s.

Information about the ISL affair presented to the parliament by, among others, Play the Game Award winner Andrew Jennings, has contributed to the political unease over the country’s football leadership.

Politicians see Teixeira as an embarrassment to a country that is trying to boost its global reputation through the World Cup 2014 and the Olympics of Rio 2016.

Former World Cup winner Romario, who is now a congress member, celebrated Teixira’s departure by twittering: “We exterminated a cancer from Brazilian football.”

Following FIFA's embarrassing bust up with  the Brazilian government following Jerome Valcke' crude admonition, Sepp Blatter is scheduled to meet with Dilma Rousseff to discuss World Cup planning.

Meantime, leadership of the CBF has been transitioned. To whom you might ask? The video above shows the new CBF leader, who actions shown in the video above were described by the Dirty Tackle blog as follows:

But while [Teixeira] with nearly two decades of corruption scandals to his credit won't be missed, his successor, Jose Maria Marin, seems a bit less subtle in his grifting. A former footballer and politician in Sao Paulo, Marin was caught pocketing a winner's medal intended for Sao Paulo Juniors Cup winners Corinthians, leaving their goalkeeper without one back in January. Marin has denied stealing the medal. He probably also claims to be mistaken for Brad Pitt all the time.

As Andersen writes, Brazilian football governance has gone "from the frying pan and into the fire."