RIO DE JANEIRO: Joao Havelange has been released from hospital in Rio de Janeiro where he has been in hospital for the past 10 days after lung problems.

A spokesman for the Samartino hospital had said overnight that his condition had improved well enough for doctors to clear him to return home.

The 99-year-old former president of FIFA had been admitted and treated in June last year after a respiratory infection.

Havelange, who led FIFA between 1974 and 1998, resigned his honorary membership of the International Olympic Committee in 2001 and then his honoraru presidency of the world football federation in 2013.

He did so to avoid ethics commission action by both bodies after confirmation that he and his son-in-saw, Ricardo Teixeira, had accepted more than $20m in illicit commissions for World Cup television rights from ISL, the bankrupted former FIFA and IOC marketing partner.

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