FIFA sack four top executives

FIFA have sacked four top executives in the wake of a damaging US court judgement that ruled they had 'lied repeatedly' in negotiations with sponsors.

The four, Jerome Valcke, Stefan Schuster, Tom Houseman and Rob Lampman, have been dismissed after being named in the court judgement as having seriously misled the credit card giants Mastercard. The court ruling said FIFA breached their obligation to give MasterCard first refusal on post-2006 sponsorship when they agreed a deal with VISA instead.

The ruling stated: 'FIFA's negotiators lied repeatedly to MasterCard, including when they assured MasterCard that...FIFA would not sign a deal for the post-2006 sponsorship rights with anyone else unless it could not reach agreement with MasterCard.'

It also said that the negotiators provided VISA with blow-by-blow updates of the MasterCard negotiations, while their marketing director [Valcke] lied to both MasterCard and to VISA.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter decided on the swift action to limit any damage caused by the controversy.

A FIFA statement read: 'The FIFA employees who had conducted negotiations with VISA and MasterCard were accused of repeated dishonesty during negotiations and of giving false information to the FIFA-deciding bodies in question.'

'Even though the judgment has proved to be very biased in favour of MasterCard, the fact cannot be overlooked that FIFA's negotiations breached its business principles. FIFA cannot possibly accept such conduct among its own employees.'

The statement went on to say that FIFA are considering an appeal against the court ruling, but it is understood that such action is unlikely.