Brazil, August 17, 2016 – Former President, Federation of International Football(FIFA) Joao Havelange is dead. He died on Tuesday at the Samaritino Hospital in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
He was 100 years old. Havelange who was FIFA president for more than two decades resigned following corruption allegations in FIFA.
He was born in 1916 to Jean-Marie Faustin Goedefroid de Havelange, a wealthy Belgian family in Rio de Janeiro. He is a lawyer by profession though sport was his true love. He represented Brazil in swimming at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and again in Helsinki in 1952, where he was on the water polo team.
Havelange was president of the Brazilian Sports Confederation for 15 years and joined the Brazilian Olympic Committee in 1955, and later the IOC in 1963. He was a member of the IOC until 2011.
In 1974 he got the job of FIFA president, succeeding Sir Stanley Rous as the first non-European in the role.
