Football's world governing body announced this week that Dr Francois Carrard, a respected Swiss lawyer and former director general of the International Olympic Committee, is to head up its independent reform committee.
Nothing wrong with that – Carrard is independent and he has an unblemished record.
What is wrong is that the committee he will preside over is hardly independent. Moreover, there are some shady characters on it, some of whom have been part of the governing body while corruption was festering in its underbelly.
Three members of the so-called are on FIFA’s current executive committee, the most important organ this group is meant to reform.
Only three of the 12 members are from outside current football officialdom (including Australian Kevan Gosper).
On the committee is Hany Abou Rida from Egypt, current member of the FIFA ExCo, who has been .
He voted for Qatar and was seen as a chief side-kick to Mohamed Bin Hammam, who is now serving a lifetime ban for corruption.
He accompanied Bin Hammam on the private plane that took the former AFC president to Trinidad-Tobago on a fateful trip to hand out bribe money to 25 football officials in order to gain their vote in his bid to become FIFA president.
Also on the plane were Vernon Manilal Fernando of Sri Lanka, since banned for life by FIFA’s ethics committee, and Worawi Makudi of Thailand, who has also been accused variously of corruption and remains the subject of ethics committee investigations.
And Abou-Rida is on the reform committee.
Another is Constant Omari Selemani from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a FIFA ExCo member, one of Sepp Blatter’s biggest supporters and a man who accused The Sunday Times of racism for .
And he’s now on the reform committee.
Then there is the biggest name of all, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, of the Kuwait royal family, a FIFA ExCo member, president of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and probably Asia’s most powerful sports official. At the age of 51, he is young enough to one day become FIFA president, .
He is a close ally of Sheikh Salman, the AFC president who engineered his appointment to the FIFA ExCo, an opponent, by the way, of Australia’s membership of the AFC, a fierce supporter of Sepp Blatter and a man who didn’t take kindly to the opposition to Qatar hosting the World Cup.
“We will face all these racist attempts and attacks and will stand with Qatar,” he declared. “Nobody will take from Qatar the hosting of the 2022 World Cup in Doha.”
In Doha? I thought the World Cup was hosted by countries, not cities.
And Sheikh Ahmad is on FIFA’s reform committee.
Then there is Dr Gorka Villar, director general of CONMEBOL, the South American Confederation, who also happens to be the son of Angel Villar Llona, a member of FIFA’s ExCo, a fierce opponent of reform and currently under investigation by the FIFA ethics committee over his role in Qatar winning the World Cup hosting bid.
While being the son of Villar senior doesn’t make young Gorka a crook, his appointment is certain to be controversial. Not in the least because Gorka gets a decent airing in The Ugly Game, the book by Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert cataloguing how Mohamed Bin Hammam masterminded the corrupt strategy for landing Qatar victory in the World Cup bid.
What is clear from this unseemly line-up is that FIFA’s confederations, who nominated these people, are either not fair dinkum about reform or have no understanding of the breadth of FIFA’s needed reforms. You could ask, are they serious?
Nominations and appointments by confederations to FIFA committees is a secretive, politically expedient process which should be the first to be done away with under FIFA’s reforms. They just don’t get it.
How the good Dr Carrard is expected to push through genuine reform with this shonky cabal around his table is difficult to fathom.
