Ex-Concacaf executive says FIFA still lacks financial transparency
A former Concacaf executive turned whistleblower has warned that FIFA and its regional bodies remain financially opaque and are embracing Saudi investment without adequate human rights safeguards.
Mel Brennan, a former Concacaf executive who acted as a confidential source for law enforcement ahead of the 2015 raids that indicted dozens of football officials, has published a book arguing the sport's governance remains fundamentally flawed. In Fixing Football, Brennan details his time working under former president Jack Warner and the late general secretary Chuck Blazer, noting that despite their removal, structural accountability never arrived.
Brennan argues that Concacaf’s current president, Victor Montagliani, missed a historic opportunity to reform the confederation after the 2015 scandal. The organisation simply relied on the fact that Montagliani was not Warner or Blazer to claim change, rather than implementing democratic or transparent financial structures. It remains unclear how Concacaf doles out its dollars.
While European football focuses on its own financial regulations, the global administration of the sport continues to resist independent oversight. Brennan notes that despite the jailing of past officials, FIFA under Gianni Infantino has not adopted live-broadcast council meetings or real-time public bank account disclosures. “Some cockroaches have scattered and other cockroaches came in but the overall smell remains the same,” he writes.
The lack of rigorous governance is now facilitating controversial sovereign capital flows into the sport, a trend closely watched by European investors. Brennan specifically criticised Concacaf for pursuing sponsorship deals with Saudi Arabia and accepting investment from the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund. “Any nation state that is murdering journalists has to be marginalized,” he said, arguing that partnerships must be evaluated against human rights records rather than purely financial metrics.
Brennan attributes the persistence of this opacity to a historical failure by North American stakeholders to demand accountability. He described former US Soccer president Sunil Gulati as acting like a "World Bank guy" who admired the corrupt economic engine built by Warner and Blazer from a distance rather than intervening. He also accused major US media outlets of acting "more like Pravda" than investigative bodies, prioritising access over scrutinising the confederation's finances during a period when football ranked low in the North American sports market.
As the region prepares to host the 2026 World Cup alongside Mexico and Canada, Brennan warned the tournament will fail as a true regional success if underlying inequalities are not addressed. He pointed to segregated youth soccer structures in his home state of Maryland as evidence that the sport's economic benefits still do not reach marginalised communities.
