It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when things went south between Blazer and Warner.

Throughout his career, Warner has been dogged by allegations of corruption, including several related to ticket sales. For the 1989 World Cup qualifier versus the U.S. in Trinidad, for example, Warner, then the head of the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation, allegedly engineered the sale of 60% more tickets than there were seats in the venue, pocketing the extra money. Although almost 35,000 people managed to squeeze into a stadium built to hold 28,500, some 10,000 additional ticket holders were stuck outside, furious, and the stands were so packed that the players had to be carried by hand over the crowd onto the pitch.

Warner was also accused of making upwards of $1.3 million from sales of marked up ticket packages to the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, and he allegedly appropriated nearly $200,000 donated to aid Haiti earthquake victims.

In response to an email detailing these and other allegations, Warner, a member of Trinidad and Tobago’s parliament, said they were all “totally untrue.” He also said he would alert his lawyers “so that they can stand by to take such action as may be deemed appropriate” if BuzzFeed published the allegations. He declined further comment.

Time and again, Warner’s most vocal defender had been Blazer. He called the 1989 ticket scandal “a lot of noise and press” with “very little credibility.” When FIFA rebuked Warner because a travel agency his family owned allegedly resold World Cup tickets at huge markup, Blazer chalked it up to changes in ticketing policies, saying, “It sounds worse than it was.” Warner denied wrongdoing.

But Warner’s increasingly thorny public demeanor may have made it more difficult to defend him.

In October 2009, speaking in London at the Leaders in Football summit — a kind of TED Talks for soccer — he complained that while Australia had given him a pricey gift bag on his arrival, England had not. Both were bidding for the 2018 World Cup. “Why isn’t there a bag for England?” Warner asked. “This is the type of thing that loses you a bid.”

Around that time, Blazer reversed an earlier plan to acquire adjacent condos for him and Warner at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. “It became clear that continuing with side by side units were unwise since his stability was clearly questionable by then,” Blazer wrote.

Kevin Payne, who until last fall was the president of the D.C. United MLS team and has spent more than three decades in the sport, said he believes the two were driven further apart in late 2010, when they voted on which nation would host the 2022 World Cup.

FIFA’s ExCo votes by secret ballot, and Blazer’s was never in doubt: He longed for the United States to host the Cup again. Warner, too, had long promised that he would cast his lot for the United States, and he publicly claimed that he did indeed vote for the U.S. But in the end, it was tiny Qatar — which has never qualified for a World Cup and is so hot during tournament season that it plans to build air-conditioned stadiums — that won the day. This March, press reports emerged that Warner and his family received almost $2 million from a Qatari concern in exchange for his vote, an allegation that Warner has dismissed as a “witch hunt.”

“I was in the room in Zurich when the announcements were made,” said Payne. “I think Chuck was pretty upset and hurt. It’s just inconceivable that Warner wouldn’t vote for the U.S.”

Ultimately, Blazer took an axe to their relationship: On May 24, 2011, Blazer informed FIFA of an alleged attempt by Warner and fellow ExCo member Mohamed Bin Hammam to offer bribes for votes. Bin Hammam, a Qatari, was making a run at the FIFA presidency, and, at a meeting of Caribbean soccer officials arranged by Warner earlier that month, delegates were allegedly given paper bags containing $40,000 in cash.

A secret videotape shot by someone attending a meeting the following day showed Warner discussing “the gift you received yesterday” and urging the delegates to vote for Bin Hammam. “I know there are some people here who believe they are more pious than thou,” Warner said. “If you are pious go to a church, friends, but the fact is our business is our business.”

Blazer’s revelations set off a firestorm. Warner, who denied he had done anything improper, was quickly suspended by FIFA and in less than three weeks resigned his positions at FIFA and CONCACAF. Bin Hammam, who has professed innocence, was banned for life from all soccer activities by FIFA, although the Court for Arbitration of Sport ultimately annulled that ban. This week, a new exposé alleged that Bin Hammam paid millions of dollars in bribes to bring the World Cup to Qatar.

In the wake of the 2011 scandal, Blazer, who would collect nearly $5 million from CONCACAF that year, was hailed as a whistleblower, a hero, and a force for cleaning up the sport. That September, he surprised the organizers of the Forest Hills High School 50th reunion by picking up the tab for a Friday night cocktail party in the Trump Tower. “He had two bands, videographer, open bar, and great hors d’oeuvres. Not a trivial event,” said Murray Vale, co-chair of the reunion. “We were stupefied. He was very successful in what he did and he shared.”

Scarcely two weeks later, as evidence of his self-dealing started to emerge, Blazer learned that CONCACAF’s new leadership planned to terminate him and that he should cease payments to himself pending an investigation. Blazer got ahead of the news by announcing that he would resign from CONCACAF that December. In interviews, he said he was bored. “This has been the best job in the world, but I need some action,” Blazer said. “People should seriously consider me for a top CEO.”

On Nov. 10, he instructed CONCACAF’s Florida bank to pay $1.4 million to Sportvertising’s Caymans bank account, funds he has refused to return because he says the confederation owes him money.

Although Blazer’s 21-year run at CONCACAF came to an end in December 2011, he continued to access his office at the confederation until the following April. That June, Warner unleashed his own allegations of abuse and corruption against Blazer.

CONCACAF appointed a retired U.S. federal judge, the former chief justice of Barbados’ high court, and a former Panamanian partner at auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers Interamerica to conduct an investigation into Blazer and Warner. But by the time they got to the Trump Tower, Blazer’s office had been cleaned out. And, the investigators later wrote, they were “unable to collect documents from the computers primarily used by Blazer because, according to witnesses, Blazer most often used his own computers for CONCACAF business.”

Contacted by investigators, Blazer said the confederation owed him $7 million, including $5.2 million for broadcast rights to Gold Cups running through 2021. “The amount owed to Mr. Blazer is very substantial,” wrote his attorney, Stuart I. Friedman, to the CONCACAF Integrity Committee. He said Blazer would decline “to engage in production of documents or participation in interviews.”

The final report, released in April 2013, was devastating, revealing over 113 pages how Blazer and Warner accumulated power and wealth over the years. But Tim Treanor, an attorney at Sidley Austin, the white-shoe firm retained to help with the probe, said it had limitations. “We weren’t interested in what he did before CONCACAF or non-CONCACAF activities during his time there,” Treanor said.

In February of last year, Blazer announced that he would not seek reelection to FIFA’s ExCo. He was replaced by one of his oldest allies, Gulati, the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, who initially said he would usher in new transparency by disclosing his FIFA compensation. He has not done so.

Soon thereafter, FIFA suspended Blazer for various breaches of its code of ethics. In August, FIFA’s chief investigator, Robert Torres, said he had received written confirmation that Blazer would not participate in any soccer-related activities for the remainder of the year and thus would suspend the association’s probe into Blazer’s conduct until sometime in 2014. Late last month, Torres declined comment on when the probe might resume.

In recent months, Blazer has kept a low profile, writing on his blog only once — to congratulate his Russian friend Valery Gergiev for being a flag bearer at the Sochi Olympics. Gergiev, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, is close to Putin and has publicly sided with the administration’s stances on homosexuality and Pussy Riot.

In April, Blazer underwent surgery for an undisclosed illness; reached shortly before then in his Trump Tower apartment, he declined an interview request, saying he needed to focus on his health. He did not respond to subsequent communications.