In recent weeks, both FIFA and UEFA have received hundreds of questions, including several related to information contained in confidential documents. FIFA's president, Gianni Infantino, was UEFA's most senior administrator before being elected to lead global soccer in 2016. FIFA officials discussed the prospect of a new hack, and more uncomfortable revelations in the news media, on the edges of the FIFA Council meeting last week in Kigali, Rwanda. Information published by Football Leaks has rattled global soccer since 2015, when stolen documents emerged on a specially created website. Since the initial leak, a trove of emails, contracts and private messages have been obtained exclusively by the German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Der Spiegel has sought to deal with the volume of information it received by sharing it with an investigative reporting consortium called European Investigative Collaborations. The leaks have uncovered some of soccer's biggest secrets, shining light on dubious practices that have led to tougher regulations in soccer and in some cases, criminal prosecutions. FIFA earlier this year announced planned changes to the $6 billion transfer market, in part as a response to dealings unveiled by Football Leaks, and Spanish authorities have successfully prosecuted top players and coaches for tax evasion. Most recently, information obtained from the leak led to articles in Der Spiegel that revealed the details of a nondisclosure agreement Cristiano Ronaldo signed with a Las Vegas woman who accused the Portuguese star of sexually assaulting her in 2009. Ronaldo has denied the charges and, through his lawyers, threatened to sue the magazine. A coordinator with EIC said he could not comment on the content of the next batch of articles, or when they would be published. FIFA issued a statement criticising the leaks of stolen information. "FIFA condemns any attempts to compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data in any organisation using unlawful practices," FIFA said. Asked about the leaks, Infantino said he had tried to do his work honestly. That has meant having discussions and sharing ideas and documents with numerous people, he added. "If then this is being portrayed as something bad then I think there's not much I can do other than my job," he said during a conversation in Kigali last week. "We are not stealing." Details of the person or group behind Football Leaks were presented in a book written by two reporters from Der Spiegel and published earlier this year. The group told the authors that its aim is to cleanse world soccer by exposing bad actors. Football Leaks is not the only major data breach that has roiled soccer, or global sports. In October, the US Justice Department announced charges against seven Russian intelligence officers who it said had successfully compromised the networks of organisations including FIFA and the International Olympic Committee. And for most of the past year, confidential emails belonging to the Portuguese club Benfica have surfaced on the internet. Those leaks have highlighted how the club has tried to influence senior figures in soccer and forged close links to officials responsible for refereeing. Benfica have denied wrongdoing and sought Google's help in identifying those who have republished the documents. The New York Times
UEFA has said it may have been subject to a similar cyber attack to ones that affected FIFA earlier this year and in 2017. The FIFA attacks led to the release of a list of players who had failed drug tests along with other information set to be published by European media companies. Now UEFA officials have fallen victim to a phishing attack and persuaded to reveal login details, although the regulatory body said it could not find evidence of a hack in its own systems.