Mel Brennan, a former Concacaf executive who acted as a confidential source for law enforcement and journalists investigating football corruption, has released a memoir exposing the organisation’s troubled past. The book, titled Fixing Football, offers an insider’s perspective on the era dominated by disgraced officials Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer.
Trump Tower Years
Brennan worked at the confederation’s offices on the 17th floor of Trump Tower in New York during a period when corruption was institutionalised. Chuck Blazer, the organisation’s former general secretary, lived on the 49th floor of the same building, while he and Warner had previously shared an apartment on the 10th floor across from Donald Trump and Marla Maples. This physical proximity to wealth and power, Brennan suggests, created an environment where accountability seemed impossible.
“I would imagine that Chuck, Jack, and others would do anything to stay out of jail,” Brennan stated. “These were not gangsters. These were opportunistic cockroaches.”
The 2015 Raids
When law enforcement simultaneously raided a Zurich hotel and Concacaf headquarters in Miami in 2015, Brennan was not surprised. The FBI had previously engaged him in dialogue about the organisation’s activities, though planned meetings were postponed on two occasions. Unbeknown to many at the time, Blazer had become an undercover informant for the FBI and IRS as early as 2011, assisting investigators who would eventually indict numerous officials across FIFA and Concacaf.
Brennan argued that Concacaf’s prominence in the scandals stemmed partly from incompetence rather than sophisticated criminality. While other confederations were led by established business figures, Concacaf operated through opportunism. Warner, a former history teacher, recognised the Caribbean’s potential to challenge the Mexican-Guatemalan football hierarchy, yet lacked legitimate corporate governance experience.
Grassroots Cost
The cost of this corruption extended beyond financial crime. Brennan highlights the lost opportunities for grassroots development, noting that funds intended for maintaining pitches and programmes in Trinidad and elsewhere disappeared. Children were unable to play on grass-strewn fields because money allocated for maintenance went elsewhere entirely.
“If you are a girl and you play sport, you only have a small chance to go pro but if you play sport and you stay in sport you are more likely to lead an organization as an adult,” he observed, emphasising that such pathways were denied to many while officials treated the confederation like a game show.
Pessimism Over Reform
Despite the revelations and reforms following the 2015 raids, Brennan remains sceptical about lasting change. In his book, he writes: “Football survived Sepp Blatter. It survived Jack Warner. It survived Chuck Blazer. And it will survive Gianni Infantino.” This warning suggests that the structural conditions enabling corruption persist, even as individual perpetrators face justice.
Brennan also criticises the North American media landscape, arguing that football’s status as a secondary sport from 1990 to 2015 meant investigative scrutiny was rare until the scandal broke. The sport ranked “sixth or seventh on the media table,” creating conditions where access journalism prevailed over accountability.