Scandal hurting soccer's image

09:06 AM ET 07.17 | Word of the latest scandal came last Wednesday. Joao Havelange took $1 million in kickbacks from FIFA's now-defunct marketing partner ISL in 1997 alone, while he was the governing body's president. His son-in-law and longtime but since-deposed grand poobah of Brazilian soccer, Ricardo Teixeira, also a member of FIFA's exclusive Executive Committee, took some $13 million from the same company from 1992 through 1997. In spite of repaying about $6 million to the Swiss government to end the probe and keep their identities secret, the prosecutor's investigation was unsealed and the secret was let out. There is corruption in the upper echelons of FIFA -- some secret. Oh, and a third executive committee member, Paraguay's Nicolas Leoz, had taken money too. A mere $130,000 over two payments in 2000. Havelange is, as of this writing, still FIFA's honorary president. He is a mentor of current president Sepp Blatter, after all. The Swiss prosecutor found that Blatter had known about these transgressions for many years. Yet the pint-sized president led a standing ovation for Havelange just last May, at a FIFA congress, and maintained that he wasn't in the wrong since he???d not actually broken any Swiss laws.

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