Even in an age inured to corruption, the infamous reign of Sepp Blatter over football’s global ruling body, Fifa, was jaw-droppingly spectacular. For 40 years, from joining as technical director in 1975 until his dramatic resignation as president in 2015, he built an organisation from a squad of a dozen staffers into an international powerhouse that he ran with an iron hand. How did he do it? David Conn’s patient unravelling of Fifa’s tangled web provides the answer, and it makes for ugly but revealing reading. Blatter presided over a culture of kickbacks, money laundering and tax dodges that made Fifa a byword for crookery long before he was forced from his job. Conn, a sports journalist on the Guardian, negotiates the murky world of big money with confidence and dogged calm in this tale of the beautiful game gone bad.
• The Fall of the House of Fifa by David Conn is published by Yellow Jersey (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
