It was three days before Thanksgiving in 2013. In Zurich, FIFA issued a news release announcing that it was fighting match-fixing, and Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s president, celebrated after a Swiss initiative to cap soccer managers’ pay had failed.

And in Brooklyn, where it was a brisk, dry Monday, Chuck Blazer entered Courtroom 10A South in a wheelchair. After the judge ordered the doors locked and the hallway cleared of lurkers, Mr. Blazer admitted that he had taken bribes from bidders seeking to host the 1998 and 2010 World Cups, and then he uttered the plea that would help lead to corruption charges against top officials of FIFA: guilty.

“Among other things, I agreed with other persons in or around 1992 to facilitate the acceptance of a bribe in conjunction with the selection of the host nation for the 1998 World Cup,” Mr. Blazer told Judge Raymond J. Dearie when he entered his plea in 2013 in United States District Court in Brooklyn.

Other papers filed in the case said Morocco’s bid committee had bribed Mr. Blazer; the 1998 tournament was eventually awarded to France.