Sepp Blatter Praises the Late Chuck Blazer, Who Spurred His Downfall

This week is not the first time Chuck Blazer put soccer officials in an uncomfortable position. Four years after his tax evasion and various other crimes led him to become a government informant in a wide-ranging investigation of corruption in world soccer, and two years after that cooperation led to the arrests of dozens of his former colleagues, many in the sport still shudder at the thought of being linked with him.

That might explain why on Thursday, a day after Blazer’s death at 72, some of those same officials were spare in their comments about him. The president of U.S. Soccer, Sunil Gulati, a protégé of Blazer’s, declined to comment on his death. Concacaf, the regional governing body…