A onetime soccer dad who coached his son’s team in New Rochelle, N.Y., Mr. Blazer moved from the local and regional ranks of soccer to become a power broker at its upper levels. With a mane of hair and an unruly beard, he lived an eccentric, extravagant lifestyle. Sometimes he carried a parrot on his shoulder. He was said to have kept two apartments in Trump Tower in Manhattan, one for himself and another mostly for his cats.

He was executive vice president of the United States Soccer Federation from 1984 to 1986, and was the second-ranking official in the governing body for soccer in the North American, Central America and Caribbean region, known as Concacaf, from 1990 to 2011. He served as a member of FIFA’s executive committee from 1997 to 2013, a period in which the organization was severely lacking in ethical restraint.

Upon pleading guilty to federal charges, Mr. Blazer forfeited $1.9 million and cooperated with the authorities as a witness. His insider testimony assisted a far-reaching inquiry that ultimately touched a number of nations, predominantly in South and Central America, and included more than 40 defendants, corporations as well as individuals. About half have pleaded guilty, with more than a dozen indicted defendants remaining out of the reach of the American authorities.

“Chuck Blazer was important in the early development of the game in the U.S., while at same time he was corrupt and used the game for personal enrichment,” David Larkin, a Washington lawyer specializing in international sports and anticorruption cases, said in a phone interview on Thursday.

Charles Gordon Blazer was born in New York on April 26, 1945, to Abe and Edna Blazer. According to “American Huckster,” a 2016 book about Mr. Blazer by Mary Papenfuss and Teri Thompson, he grew up in Queens and, as a boy, worked in the family businesses, a luncheonette and stationery store. He graduated from New York University in 1965 with a degree in accounting.