Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Why Educate? segunirora.substack.com/p/why-educat...segunirora.substack.comWhy Educate?Job Training? Liberation? Or Something Else? 011
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 31/08/2026Every August 30th, Remember Elijah McClain.segunirora.substack.comI Don't Even Kill FliesEvery August 30th, Remember Elijah McClain 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 28/08/2026 The takeover, its own architects concede, will not make the game meaningfully more affordable...The Federation has also not published the vision the vote is meant to serve... segunirora.substack.com/p/the-vote-i...segunirora.substack.comThe Vote in Dallas Is Not the ReformOn Saturday, U.S. Soccer will move to absorb the country's largest youth organization. Yet consolidation is not accountability. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 27/08/2026I was depressed about what I was seeing at #CONCACAF, walking the New York streets, when I ran into George Plimpton at a food stand; out of the blue, he asked me "Why the long face?". I told him "Where I work we can impact the whole world, but we diminish that work for the greed of two men." (1/2) 110
Reposted by Mel BrennanFair Play Publishing @fairplaybooks.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Two clocks ticking: #BookWeek is here and #FathersDay is close. Our eight Father's Day picks ship in time if you order by Sunday 30 August. Code DAD2026 for a surprise. 🎁 buff.ly/RA7CRxf 021
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 27/08/2026segunirora.substack.com/p/wrong-answ...segunirora.substack.comWrong AnswerHow a losing quiz-show contestant became a Champions League coach — and why sport one of few places we get to watch someone become. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 23/08/2026Gianni Infantino flew to a Caribbean children’s tournament he was explicitly asked to skip. To understand why, you have to understand what the Caribbean has always been worth in football… segunirora.substack.com/p/the-man-wh...segunirora.substack.comThe Man Who Would Not Stay AwayGianni Infantino flew to a Caribbean children’s tournament he was explicitly asked to skip. To understand why, you have to understand what the Caribbean has always been worth in football. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 21/08/2026Can FIFA Even BE Reformed? Probably not; here’s how to build an alternative to it today. segunirora.substack.com/p/can-fifa-e...segunirora.substack.comCan FIFA Even BE Reformed?Probably not; here’s how to build an alternative to it today. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Here is what I have come to believe, having sat inside the machine and read its private faxes. The cycle repeats...because the incentive structure is unchanged. Nothing has been reformed... segunirora.substack.com/p/the-fax-ma...segunirora.substack.comThe Fax Machine and the FiringsOn Kevin Lamour, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, and the machinery FIFA uses to make critics disappear 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 17/08/2026Describe your musical taste in three artists, no genres: - KRS-ONE - Rufus, featuring Chaka Khan - Queen 000
Reposted by Mel BrennanFair Play Publishing @fairplaybooks.bsky.social · 13/08/2026The #WorldCup is over. The questions about who runs football are not. FIXING FOOTBALL is Mel Brennan's view from inside CONCACAF - memoir, exposé and a reform agenda. buff.ly/jvy9v0R 021
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 12/08/2026At my first ever book signing, I signed my book, SAVING SOCCER (FIXING FOOTBALL outside North America) with a green pen. You know, green, for the field. Well, hopefully those picking up the book got it... a.co/d/0ceKHXhQa.coAmazon.com 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 12/08/2026@greatdismal.bsky.social Artimage's name is Willis Corto. Always meant to ask you, was that naming a f-you to far-right extremism through the lens of the hateful IRL figure Willis Carto, who scholar George Michael called"undoubtedly the central figure in the post-World War II American far right"? 020
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Uh...no. Unless we play our role in demanding the right TYPE of institution, we 100% will get the same kind, but called something different. It will feel like victory, until the most vulnerable test it. No, I don't want to hear from another single closed room about anything... 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Meh; it's more complicated than that. MAHA is 100% agenda-driven, making it mostly wrong on most things & partly right on a few, confusing those who haven't leaned into authentic info, but instead into choosing sides, in a public health context that gave us Crisco-is-fine! from 1911 until the 90s. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 06/08/2026When #FIFA Tries To Police FIFA, You Can Either Laugh...or Cry. I choose laughter. Then I choose replacement, not reform... segunirora.substack.com/p/the-galact...segunirora.substack.comTHE GALACTIC COMEDYWhen FIFA Tries To Police FIFA, You Can Either Laugh...or Cry. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 04/08/2026The post-2015 #FIFA reforms are being quietly reversed: committees ballooning back, term limits engineered around. Told you: reforms that rely on the goodwill of the constrained are a countdown, not a cure. The #WorldCup governance machine reverts to its nature the second the cameras leave. 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 03/08/2026There was a waiting room on the 17th floor where #CONCACAF delegates from small nations sat for hours with legitimate questions about money meant for their kids' football. The whole building knew. The whole building waited them out. I was the one they sent to say nothing, warmly. 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 02/08/2026"Dynamic pricing" is a lovely phrase for charging the maximum a desperate fan will bear and calling it a market. The 2026 #FIFAWorldCup final tickets hit five figures on resale. The game the sport claims to protect got priced out of watching itself. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 01/08/2026The #FIFA Ministers Change. The Palace Never Does. open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.comThe Ministers Change. The Palace Never Does.On the collapse of FIFA Forward Enterprise, and the reform conversation that still refuses to arrive 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 31/07/2026Imagine the amount of propaganda it took to fool us into thinking this is all there is. Now imagine what happens the day it stops working... open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.comTITANICHow Much Propaganda It Took to Keep the Possibility of America Away From Americans 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 31/07/2026The first #FIFA World Cup final halftime show. Curated by Coldplay. Blessed by a Ted Lasso cameo. Somewhere a #soccer marketing deck called this "growing the game." Growth measured in everything except the number of kids who can afford to play it. 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 30/07/2026On my way out of the 2002 #FIFA World Cup a very powerful man handed me a check for $75, drawn on an account he had no right to touch. Small enough to insult. Illegal enough to instruct. The whole institution fits in that check if you look closely. 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 30/07/2026Excited to be joining the Carroll Book Festival on Saturday, September 19 as a Featured Author! 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 29/07/2026You can't fix this #FIFA thing by jailing the current crop & hiring nicer men. The machine concentrates power, kills accountability, & rewards loyalty, then manufactures the same leadership forever. Better people is a fantasy; better structure is what we need segunirora.substack.com/p/can-fifa-e...segunirora.substack.comCan FIFA Even BE Reformed?Probably not; here’s how to build an alternative to it today. 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 27/07/2026Elite football lives entirely in the power-and-performance pillar: winning, spectacle, hierarchy. The pleasure-and-participation pillar - the kid, the pitch, the joy - is a rounding error in the budget. The final was six weeks of the first pillar cosplaying as the second. "This is unity." Sure. 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 26/07/2026Red card Tuesday, ban gone Thursday, one presidential phone call in between. The rules in world football - at #FIFA - are a velvet rope: lifted for the important, snapped back on everyone else. Structure is destiny, and this structure was built to bend one direction. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 25/07/2026They invented a #FIFA peace prize with no vote, no council, no shame, and handed it to a demagogue. People called it a scandal. It wasn't a scandal. A scandal is the system malfunctioning. This was the system working exactly as designed, out loud, for once. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 23/07/2026Rule I learned on the 17th floor of #CONCACAF: anywhere you cannot easily see into an organization is exactly where the lying, cheating, and stealing is happening. Every #WorldCup ticketing scandal, every vanished #FIFA disciplinary ban, every invented prize traces back to a room with no windows. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 22/07/2026A goalless slog until the 88th, wrapped in a Super Bowl halftime, watched by a stadium that could afford to be there. That wasn't a football match. It was a diagram of who the sport is now for. The spectacle of the #FIFAWorldCup told on itself. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 19/07/2026Two confederations have failed the Americas for fifty years. It is time to build our own. open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.comProposed: CoA - Confederation of the AmericasTwo confederations have failed the Americas for fifty years. It is time to build our own. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 18/07/2026Here are five reasons to dissolve CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, and to build one “Confederation of the Americas” for soccer across fifty nations… open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.comProposed: CoA - Confederation of the AmericasTwo confederations have failed the Americas for fifty years. It is time to build our own. 000
Reposted by Mel BrennanFair Play Publishing @fairplaybooks.bsky.social · 18/07/2026‘#FIFA survived Blatter and Warner. It will survive #Infantino too.’ @segunirora.bsky.social talking with Matthew Hall of @us.the guardian.com buff.ly/NfAeLxe #WorldCupbuff.lyConcacaf whistleblower Mel Brennan: ‘Fifa survived Blatter and Warner. It will survive Infantino too’Former Concacaf executive and whistleblower Mel Brennan says football’s governance remains opaque despite the post-2015 promises of reform 032
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 17/07/2026...Amy Coney Barrett is not a villain. She is something more common and, in a person with her power, more dangerous: a comfortable, upper-class white American woman who cannot extend her own vivid fear one inch past her own front door... open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.comMe, Me, Me.The Basic-ness of Barrett 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 17/07/2026Thanks to the Guardian newspaper for the opportunity to speak truth to power. www.theguardian.com/football/202...theguardian.comConcacaf whistleblower Mel Brennan: ‘Fifa survived Blatter and Warner. It will survive Infantino too’Former Concacaf executive and whistleblower Mel Brennan says football’s governance remains opaque despite the post-2015 promises of reform 011
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 17/07/2026…Water that does not poison your children is not a consumer preference competing with Netflix subscriptions. A childhood without lead in the bloodstream is not a purchase… open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.comThe Floor Is Not a MarketWhat the Hoover Institution’s “Human Prosperity Project” cannot see, will not count, and was built never to find 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 15/07/2026Anyone who has lived any amount of actual life? They know that nothing is all good news. The fact that this administration cannot imagine telling a story replete with good news and difficult news tells me that they can't face the truth as we all know it. Sad. Problematic. 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 15/07/2026I appreciate knowing, in my heart, how much Nolan is enjoying the failed, crippled and butthurt nature of some discourse on his film THE ODYSSEY, given his choice of a Black woman for Helen of Troy. Nolan is laughing at all the pushback, and so am I.static.klipy.comLupita Nyong'o Smiling and ClappingALT: Lupita Nyong'o Smiling and Clapping 010
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 07/07/2026Belgium didn't beat us because their kids love the ball more. They beat us because they treated failure as a design problem. We built a tollbooth. I drafted the fix: The American Right to Play Act. End the monopoly. End pay-to-play. Read it, then call. segunirora.substack.com/p/the-americ...segunirora.substack.comTHE AMERICAN RIGHT TO PLAY ACTA draft of American law that changes everything; one that parents, kids and communities can believe in 000
Reposted by Mel BrennanFair Play Publishing @fairplaybooks.bsky.social · 26/06/2026The #WorldCup is a wonderful event, but behind the glossy facade is a long tale of institutional failure. The World Cup succeeds because of the #football, the players & fans, not FIFA. Read our latest book on 'Fixing Football' by @segunirora.bsky.social www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/products/fix... 041
Reposted by Mel BrennanFair Play Publishing @fairplaybooks.bsky.social · 07/07/2026Even before Trump/Infantino/red card, @segunirora.bsky.social wrote in 'Saving Soccer' in relation to those two: "It tells the world that the people holding the keys to our global sporting institutions have lost any sense of shame." Want to read more? www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/products/fix... 021
Reposted by Mel BrennanFair Play Publishing @fairplaybooks.bsky.social · 06/07/2026What's in our #WorldCup Reading Room from today? The complete collection of the very best #football books. 26% off until the end of the 2026 tournament. Don't miss out! www.fairplaypublishing.com.au/collections/... 011
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 04/07/2026This is what I mean when I say the best of power-and-performance sport generates culture. Not merely entertainment. Not merely content. Culture. The shared inheritance of witnesses... segunirora.substack.com/p/ninety-fou... #FIFA #CapeVerde #CapoVerde #FIFAWorldCup #WorldCupsegunirora.substack.comNinety-Four TimesOn Cape Verde, Argentina, and what the best of sport actually makes 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 03/07/2026"...the country worth defending is not 250 years old. It is 58. If you can hold that in your head this weekend, the holiday changes..." open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.com250? No. More Like 58.The country turning 250 this weekend is not the country worth defending. The country worth defending is much younger than that. This, believe it or not, is the good news. 000
Reposted by Mel BrennanFair Play Publishing @fairplaybooks.bsky.social · 30/06/2026Author Mel Brennan had a front row seat to the inner workings of CONCACAF, the hosts of the 2026 #WorldCup. He loves the game, but he left because of what he could not bear to witness. This is his story and his manifesto for change. buff.ly/0pDrICI 011
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 30/06/2026Perfect World Cup Wednesday, July 1: ⚽ 6:30pm — I talk SAVING SOCCER at Finksburg Library (Carroll County). How the beautiful game got run so badly, and how to fix it. Signed copies available. 8:00pm ET — USMNT vs Bosnia, Round of 32. ccpl.librarymarket.com/event/saving...ccpl.librarymarket.comSaving Soccer with Author Mel Brennan | Carroll County Public LibraryWe connect our community with welcoming spaces, innovative resources and services, and educational experiences for lifetime enrichment. 000
Mel Brennan @segunirora.bsky.social · 28/06/2026…[Players] were doing the oldest thing we do, which is to insist on meaning and beauty and belonging in the middle of conditions designed to deny us all three. That insistence is the most human thing there is… open.substack.com/pub/seguniro...open.substack.comIn Spite of It AllFIFA is the worst. But the sport they govern reminds us of how human we all are. 000