However, evidence to support such a claim is hard to find.

“At the moment we have situations where vulnerable nineteen-year-olds come from Sudan to play in domestic soccer leagues, or in the under nineteens, and they are targeted for match fixing by overseas operators,” Minister Wells told a room full of journalists in late August.

This article was written by Tracey Holmes and originally published in The Sports Ambassador. Across Substack and her podcast, Tracey does an outstanding job at holding sports authorities to account. It is republished here with her kind permission and I encourage you to subscribe and support her work.

When asked by The Sports Ambassador podcast, none of the major football organisations working in governance, delivery of competition, integrity, and player representation were aware of such specific ethnic targeting in their sport.

British is the nationality that has appeared most in Australian match fixing cases, dating back to the well-documented Southern Stars case in Melbourne 2014.

Australia has no shortage of talented footballers. It is the number one ranked organised team sport in terms of total registered players across age and gender categories.

Suggesting teenagers are coming to Australia from Sudan to play football seems unlikely given the difficulty Sudanese people face in obtaining visas.

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Sudan has been described as ‘the abandoned crisis’ by the Refugee Council of Australia (RCA).

The despair engulfing the country is multi-dimensional and catastrophic: a declared famine since 2024 and a brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and an armed paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.

More than 11 million nationals have been declared stateless and another six million are displaced internally, according to UNHCR.

“The Sudanese community in Australia is deeply affected by the crisis,” the RCA announced in April in calling for broader and more accessible visa pathways.

“Current options are limited, and the cost and eligibility requirements for family visas place them out of reach for many.”

When asked for clarification to support Minister Wells’ comments, a spokesperson said:

“The Australian Government is concerned that match-fixers target young and financially vulnerable athletes as well as those from developing nations.

“All athletes deserve protection from being targeted by match-fixing. The laws introduced to Parliament will ensure greater protections from match fixing for everyone involved in sport.

“Sports Integrity Australia continues to work with all stakeholders to provide education on the dangers of sports manipulation.”

But the Federal Sports Minister did not say that; she singled out Sudanese athletes as she answered a question about new legislation seeking to criminalise certain behaviours associated with match fixing.

Minister Wells presented no evidence to support her claim; her office says her comments were ‘illustrative’.

Sentiments about the need for athlete protection is not lost on the player association, Professional Footballers Australia (PFA).

When asked whether the PFA had any knowledge of Sudanese players being targeted by match fixers, Chief Executive Beau Busch said:

“We are not aware of the specific case of players being targeted by match fixers as referenced by the Federal Sports Minister.

“However, it is clear that match fixing continues to pose a significant challenge for the industry and protecting our people.

“The research is clear that a variety of factors contribute to its prevalence, including addiction, financial distress and a lack of education and support services.

“As such we need to move from an approach that is solely focused on sanctioning to one that proactively tackles the biggest known contributing factors such as addition, non-payment and financial vulnerability.”

Back in 2019 Australia was the first non-European country to become a signatory to the EU’s treaty to combat the global scourge of match manipulation, known as the Macolin Convention.

Seven years later, as part of national gambling reforms, which don’t go far enough according to critics, new legislation has been introduced to criminalise a suite of offences associated with match fixing.

Minister Wells explained last week it was part of the government’s ‘holistic approach’ aimed at cracking down on some of the sources of illegal gambling as well as ‘those who profit from it’, including up to ten years in jail for those found guilty.

Twenty-four hours before writing this, Football Australia was asked for a comment. A spokesperson said they required more time.

This averts the immediate confrontation of a civil war between FIFA and its richest confederation.

At a meeting in Monaco on 27 August, UEFA will tell its member associations that FIFA has met the conditions for ending the boycott and that UEFA members will participate in the U-20 Women’s World Cup in Poland, beginning on 5 September.

But among online discussions, this decision is being equated to letting Infantino off the hook. In recent days, UEFA and Concacaf had discussed a joint Nations League, outside FIFA’s jurisdiction. which would move more international matches and their commercial rights under the control of the regional bodies.

Infantino, meanwhile, seemingly crashed a visit to the Caribbean Football Union in the Dominican Republic to promote a new Under-15 World Cup open to all 211 FIFA associations. Concacaf president Victor Montagliani had asked Infantino not to attend, warning that his presence would distract from a youth tournament taking place there.

UEFA’s boycott must be understood in the right context.

And the campaign to remove Infantino is still very much alive. On 26 August, the Italian and Romanian football federations announced they would not support Infantino in the March 2027 FIFA presidential election.

How Did FIFA Get UEFA to Lift the Boycott?

The news and controversies surrounding Infantino have moved so quickly over the last month on 30 July that we may need a refresher on what UEFA’s boycott actually meant.

It came as a direct response to FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), Infantino’s plan to transfer the commercial rights to the World Cup and other FIFA competitions into a new company and sell around 20% of it to private investors.

All 55 UEFA associations agreed that their national teams would stay out of FIFA competitions until two conditions were met.

First, FIFA had to abandon FFE completely. Second, it had to provide binding assurances that it would not return with another plan to open its competitions or governance to private ownership.

Infantino withdrew FFE the following day, admitting that it was “causing division”. But UEFA kept the boycott in place.

Essentially, it feared Infantino could return next year with a similar plan under a different name.

FIFA has now reportedly provided written assurances that FFE, or a similar attempt to sell ownership interests in its competitions, will not return.

Those assurances have not been made public, they may be released after Monaco. But in the strictest term, the boycott worked.

It was meant to stop FFE and FIFA withdrew it.

"I believe we achieved a victory, since FIFA's project was withdrawn," Philippe Diallo, president of the French Football Federation, told L'Equipe.

But why not maintain the boycott until Infantino steps down?

Because UEFA had good reasons to take the exit FIFA offered.

The reason given today are that the boycott would have meant U-20 women from England, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain suffering the immediate consequences by not being able to attend the U-20 Women’s World Cup in Poland next week.

There were already cracks as to individual countries’ commitment to the boycott.

Poland was preparing to host the tournament while facing the possibility that its own team would be ordered not to play. France said that it would still participate despite the boycott. One source involved in the discussions told Reuters that UEFA wanted to avoid taking away a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” from young players.

There is no evidence that FIFA forced UEFA to back down through some private political deal. There was no great concession to make either. FIFA had already surrendered FFE, while UEFA was approaching the point where maintaining the boycott would hurt its own players more than Infantino.

So UEFA isn’t backing down against Infantino?

Seemingly not.

UEFA wants to keep European teams inside FIFA tournaments, but it has not stopped being very clear it wants Infantino out.

Only three days before the Monaco meeting, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said Infantino should recognise he had lost too much support and leave FIFA voluntarily.

If he refused, Ceferin predicted a contested election in 2027.

“I think he will have a candidate against him. I don’t know yet who.”

However, Ceferin will not run. Despite being an obvious consensus candidate, Ceferin said he wants to focus on European football. This also allows UEFA to sidestep Infantino’s accusation that the campaign against him is an attempt by rivals to remove him from office.

The timing of the Italian and Romanian announcements also looks unlikely to be accidental.

Italy withdrew its previous endorsement of Infantino on the same day the boycott was lifted. Its statement said the decision was taken in “full agreement” with UEFA and Ceferin.

Romania did not technically withdraw an endorsement because it had never submitted one. Instead, its executive committee voted formally not to support Infantino for another term. The Romanian federation said it fully supported UEFA’s position and believed FIFA now needed a leader who could restore confidence and unity.

Together, the statements make it harder for Infantino to present the end of the boycott as evidence that European opposition was collapsing.

Ten years on, Infantino is fighting to keep his career. His plan to operate the World Cup and FIFA’s main commercial operations through FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) met with revolt.

With three confederations, half of the six that make up FIFA, calling for his head, Infantino removed FFE and has apologised for the plan. However, he has defended FFE’s core goals and refused to resign from his position as FIFA President.

The opposition to him is broad. UEFA, AFC and CONCACAF, representing European, Asian and North American football, refuse to drop their threatened boycott of FIFA competitions until Infantino is gone.

But CAF and Conmebol (Africa and South America) remain firmly on his side, as do many member nations, especially smaller ones who have seen their revenues skyrocket during Infantino’s tenure.

World leaders are similarly divided. Canada’s Mark Carney and the UK’s Andy Burnham have called for Infantino to go, while Trump, who received a FIFA Peace Prize from the Italian executive, has defended him to the hilt.

But the immediate dispute may now reach further back. UEFA’s lawyers may go back to the beginnings of Infantino’s career.

The immediate dispute may now reach further back. UEFA’s lawyers have demanded that 18 FIFA officials, including Infantino, preserve material about FFE to be used in potential future proceedings. The Telegraph has reported that UEFA is also considering a full review of Infantino’s 16 years spent atop European then world football.

So we went digging. The list of allegations is not a continuous corruption case, it is incredibly varied. It is also not meant to be a ruling on Infantino’s guilt or innocence, but as a journey through a career riddled with a surprisingly consistent stream of allegations of corruption, cronyism, and governance clashes.

We initially found 76 separate controversies. We narrowed them down to 45 as instances of related behavior were combined. Sometimes, matters that came out in the same scandal were separated when they tackled unrelated issues. Where possible, we have always sought to include Infantino or FIFA’s statements about the case.

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National associations are also beginning to abandon him in public. The Dutch federation said it saw no future under Infantino and had lost confidence in his leadership. Germany’s DFB had already refused to support his re-election and is now accusing him of acting unilaterally and irresponsibly. England’s FA backed a full review of FIFA’s leadership and governance.

The knives are coming out inside FIFA. Infantino’s senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro resigned in protest, disowned any involvement in FFE and called it “a bad deal for football”. Chief operating officer Kevin Lamour said senior staff had been deceived and described FFE as one man’s project.

These attempts predate FFE, with the Guardian reporting that moves to call the emergency meeting were “already under way” after FIFA lifted Folarin Balogun’s World Cup suspension following several calls involving Donald Trump.

Yet against all of that, a small cluster of federation presidents has chosen an odd line of defense.

They accept Infantino was wrong about FFE.

But they seem to think admitting he was wrong is itself the achievement and is proof that he is fit to remain in office. And much of this campaign feels oddly coordinated.

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More than 200 of FIFA’s 211 member associations had reportedly endorsed him ahead of the vote in Rabat on 18 March 2027. No challenger had declared. He had already been returned unopposed by acclamation in Paris in 2019 and again in Kigali in 2023.

Three days ago, the coronation ended.

On 28 July, FIFA proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise, a commercial subsidiary that would house the business and event operations of the World Cup and other FIFA competitions, with a minority stake sold to private investors. Joshua Kushner’s investment vehicle was expected to lead the transaction. FIFA gave all 211 associations until 19 September to decide whether to participate, with tens of millions of dollars in additional funding attached to acceptance.

Europe answered first. On 30 July, all 55 UEFA associations rejected the plan and threatened to boycott every FIFA competition while it remained alive.

“The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade,” UEFA said. “It is not FIFA’s to sell.”

Then Concacaf turned. Its 41 associations across North America, Central America and the Caribbean rejected FFE too.

In Asia, the AFC said it had not been consulted and accused FIFA of bypassing the established channels of football governance.

Africa, Latin America and Oceania have been more cautious, promising review and consultation.

Now, the language has turned. Media reports say that Infantino may have scuppered his chances at re-election.

But while Infantino’s presidency is under its greatest pressure, it is not close to being over.

The reason is that Infantino has spent the last decade building a patronage system where those who support him have serious financial incentives to do so.

Will Infantino Fall? Not Yet

Football associations are rebelling against Infantino’s FFE proposal. They have not yet rebelled against Infantino.

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The chair of the English Football Association is also one of FIFA’s eight vice-presidents. Yet, according to the FA, she and her organisation were “completely unaware” that Infantino was preparing to place FIFA’s commercial future inside a new $20 billion company and sell part of it to private investors.

Nine days after the final, FIFA publicly announced FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE. One day later, The Times revealed that the 211 associations which must support the plan have until September 19 to decide.

That gives them 53 days to consider a company that would combine FIFA’s broadcasting, sponsorship, ticketing and licensing businesses with the operational delivery of its men’s, women’s and youth tournaments.

I broke down the numbers behind this worrying proposal for the Sports and Crime Briefing yesterday (and incidentally wrote the 2nd most-read article in the history of the newsletter!)

No asset list, independent valuation, shareholder agreement or detailed governance structure has been published. FIFA has not explained whether FFE would own its commercial rights or license them, how long the arrangement would last, what rights investors would receive or how they could sell their interests.

But yet, members have 53 days and counting to approve.

An Artificially Close Deadline

Infantino’s letter tells the associations that “the decision on whether or not to proceed with this proposal belongs entirely to you”.

Does it really?

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That same day, Russia launched one of its largest combined attacks of the war on Ukraine. Ukrainian Olympic skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych counted the barrage on X: 600 drones and 90 missiles. “It’s sad to see childhood legends turn into moral bankrupts for whom nothing is more valuable than Russian rubles,” he wrote. “Shame.”

Pirlo rejected any political reading of the day. “We came exclusively for sport and for the children,” he said. “Football has the unique power to bring people together, to overcome borders and to offer a moment of joy, especially to young kids who dream of becoming footballers.”

Two months later, Pirlo’s job as an ambassador for Fonbet helped sabotage the most important coaching appointment in Italian football.

How close was Pirlo to the job?

Seemingly one signature away. After Pep Guardiola declined, technical director Paolo Maldini and advisor Leonardo settled on Pirlo, with Italian media reporting a four-year contract to the 2030 World Cup at no more than €1.5 million a season plus bonuses tied to Euro 2028 qualification. His backroom staff was already assembled, with Roberto Baronio lined up as his deputy. His agent Tullio Tinti had begun the paperwork to free him from his club, United FC Dubai. The announcement was expected around the FIGC Federal Council of July 28.

What exactly happened?

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The diagnosis, delivered to camera, was that Kane was suffering from magia negra (black magic), mal de ojo (the evil eye) and mala energía (black energy).

The segment went viral in late June, shortly after the World Cup began.

But the ritual had not originated in Peru. It was intended to reverse a curse supposedly placed on Kane some 4,000 miles away, in a shrine town in Ghana’s Ashanti Region.

Spain are world champions. But the 2026 World Cup was shadowed by a different game: traditional priests, curanderos, seers, shamans, witch doctors, tarotists and self-styled prophets attaching curses, blessings and predictions to almost every match. This article is Part One of a new Sports and Crime Briefing investigative series diving deep into these fraud schemes, how they are monetised, and how social media clicks are turned into paying customers.

How a curse crossed two continents

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Campaz, who had scored on his World Cup debut against Uzbekistan three weeks earlier, blazed the shot over the bar.

And while Campaz converted his penalty in the shootout, it didn’t matter and Colombia went out 4-3.

On the evening of July 8, a charter carrying the Colombian squad left Vancouver for Bogotá, landing at around 3 a.m. Colombia time. National icon James Rodríguez was on board, as were his teammates.

Campaz was absent.

The next morning, journalist Camilo Pinto revealed how Campaz's social media had been flooded with abuse since the final whistle.

Among the messages, one stood out.

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“In light of the decision taken on Sunday to suspend the implementation of an automatic one-match suspension, we feel that it is time for European Football Associations, all of whom are member associations of FIFA, to intervene and ask that FIFA investigate the aforementioned decision-making processes,” they wrote.

It is one of the most concerted moves any European institution has made against a sitting FIFA president.

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The governor climbed aboard. The Netherlands was set to play Morocco in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León.

“Muy contento,” he posted on social media, “se me cumplió el sueño de subirme al Orange Bus.” (Very happy, I fulfilled my dream of climbing onboard the Orange Bus.”

The stunt on the Oranjebus was framed as a politician doing a PR coup by welcoming foreign supporters to his country and state.

But García, a Mexican presidential hopeful, is now in a spot of bother.

Why is he in trouble?

García had wanted this fixture for months. Back in January, he bet the equivalent of his monthly salary that the Netherlands would play in Monterrey.

He declared match day a public holiday, closing schools and non-essential offices. He arranged for free beer, cabrito and tacos to be handed out across Parque Fundidora and the Macroplaza, and booked Enrique Iglesias to perform.

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It is the latest chapter in a ticketing saga that had been unfolding for eight months, one that has drawn subpoenas from two American attorneys general, an investigation in Texas, a letter signed by 69 members of Congress, a formal complaint to the European Commission and a public rebuke from a sitting US president who is one of Gianni Infantino’s closest allies.

The Sports and Crime Briefing has told the whole story, from the beginning, of how FIFA, with an assist from the White House, became a tout.

The first World Cup with dynamic pricing

The 2026 World Cup is the first at which FIFA has applied variable, demand-based pricing to match tickets. The model will be familiar to anyone who has tried to buy a concert ticket in America in recent years. Prices float as demand pushes them up, and there is no ceiling.

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By the time Laurent Nuñez, the Interior Minister, faced the cameras on the morning of 31 May, the national bill was 890 people arrested, 480 of them in the Paris area, and 57 police and gendarmes injured. One man was dead, killed in a motocross accident on the edge of the celebrations.

The Paris prosecutor logged roughly half the charges as being for assault on police. Splinter groups had, in the prefecture’s own word, “systematically” torched cars, looted shops and lit fires across the city. A bakery and a restaurant near the Parc des Princes were left structurally damaged. A crowd tried to storm a police station in the 8th arrondissement. The ring road encircling the city was briefly blockaded before tactical units cleared it.

It was, almost to the letter, a rerun. A year earlier, PSG’s first Champions League title had produced a worse night: two dead, around 192 injured, more than 500 arrested and 264 vehicles burned. The 2026 arrest count was up 32% on that. Two summers, two trophies, two near-identical nights of disorder in the same streets.

The reason this should not be reported as a shock is that nobody involved treated it as one. The violence was prepared for, in detail, on both sides of the barricade.

How Paris prepared

To understand why Paris ringed itself with police this year, you have to go back to the night a year earlier and to the warnings the city had already been given even before that.

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On April 29, Arsenal and Atlético Madrid drew 1-1 in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final. The night before, Kagame had taken in the other semi-final Parc des Princes, where Paris Saint-Germain beat Bayern Munich 5-4, seated between Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and a former French president.

Every team in the last four of the Champions League football carried some form of Visit Rwanda marking, on sleeves, training kits, perimeter boards or backdrops. Rwandan media called it “the Visit Rwanda Derby.”

The semi-finals were the high-water mark of a strategy that began in 2018, when Arsenal sold its first sleeve patch to the Rwanda Development Board on a deal SportsPro reports was worth £10 million (US$13.5 million) a year.

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The match was the Riyadh Derby between Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal.

Al Nassr had been one goalkeeping error away from sealing their first Saudi Pro League title in seven years. They were denied in the 98th minute, when their own keeper Bento collided with Iñigo Martínez and shovelled the ball into his own net. The final whistle blew at 1-1.

The fight in the boxes had, by most accounts, started before the equaliser and intensified afterwards.

The response from authorities seemed muted. The Riyadh Region Police and the Ministry of Sport issued a joint statement, confirming that several people had been arrested after the brawl.

The main story being broadcast on Saudi social media is that an Al Nassr supporter in one of the VIP boxes tried to wrench an Al Hilal flag out of a rival’s hands. The collapse of Al Nassr’s title celebration in stoppage time only fueled matters further.

Why is there a rivalry between Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal?

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But Slavia’s Tribuna Sever ultras had already gathered behind the advertising boards. In the 97th minute, they stormed the bit, carrying flares and smoke bombs, and charged the other team and the away section.

Sparta goalkeeper Jakub Surovcik was struck by a pyrotechnic and had beer thrown over him. Forward Matyas Vojta was shoved. Riot police entered the field only after the crowd had breached the barriers. The match was abandoned and Sparta’s team bus left under police escort.

Czech authorities launched criminal proceedings on suspicion of rioting. Slavia could face sanctions and has vowed to ban the guilty fans for life.

“The values of Slavia are not hatred and violence,” said Slavia chief executive Jaroslav Tvrdík. “We accept responsibility and draw conseque…

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The dump appeared on PwnForums over the weekend of 25-26 April, six short weeks before the FIFA World Cup kicks off on 11 June.

The actor behind the post goes by “fuckiewuckie.” He credited ShinyHunters, the notorious breach collective whose administrators were arrested in France in June 2025. H

Foot Mercato named Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Heung-min Son, Kang-in Lee, Sadio Mane, Aymeric Laporte, Marcelo Brozovic, Mehdi Taremi and FIFA President Gianni Infantino as appearing in the trove.

What is actually in the files?

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The basic story is widely known. During the AFCON final on January 18, Senegal left the field due to what they feel was bias towards Morocco before returning and winning the trophy. CAF ruled this was grounds to grant the title to Morocco, annd Senegal has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The basics: the walkoff, the title being stripped, Senegal’s CAS appeal have been widely covered. What has not been covered with equal rigour is everything around them: the hidden internal instruction that nearly threw the match out entirely, the fans still sitting in a Moroccan prison, the betting firms that paid out twice because they had no other option, and a host nation whose showcase tournament has left a legacy more complicated than its stadiums deserved.

The Sports and Crime Briefing goes through seven points that may have been missed.

1. The same institution gave two completely opposite verdicts

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On Sunday, February 22, Mexican special forces, acting on U.S. intelligence, killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, leader of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), in rural Jalisco. By nightfall, Guadalajara was paralysed.

Buses were torched. The entire public transport network shut down. Around 1,000 people were trapped overnight inside the city zoo as cartel gunmen blocked access roads. Military helicopters circled above neighbourhoods while residents crossed the city on foot to avoid roadblocks.

In Puerto Vallarta, a tourism mecca along the coast, streets were sealed and vehicles burned. Jalisco’s governor declared a Code Red. At both Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta airports, passengers took cover as National Guard troops established defensive positions inside terminals. Southwest, Delta, United, Air Canada and WestJet suspended flights. The U.S. State Department opened a crisis hotline. Multiple governments issued travel advisories.

This came less than four months before Guadalajara is supposed to host matches within the 2026 World Cup.

How important is Guadalajara to Mexican football?

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On 26 January, former FIFA President Sepp Blatter publicly endorsed a call for fans to boycott the World Cup in the United States. Writing on social media, Blatter stated: “For the fans, there’s only one piece of advice: stay away from the USA!”

He was adding to a furore sparked by Mark Pieth, FIFA’s former head of governance reform, who said the "abuses by immigration services" and the "marginalisation of political opponents" meant fans should avoid the US.

Despite Blatter being 89, and having been banned in disgrace amid the FIFAGate corruption scandals, his warning is unprecedented.

Blatter has significant support.

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