There is no doubt FIFA’s image needs a serious make-over. That would be a massive understatement. The question is whether the young Jordanian prince, Ali Bin Al Hussein, is the one who can provide it.
On 29 May, FIFA’s vast, 200 plus membership meets in Zurich to elect a president for a new four-year term. It will be a two-man race after all other suitors, Jerome Champagne (France), Michael van Praag (Netherlands) and Luis Figo (Portugal) pulled out. The race will be between the incumbent, Sepp Blatter (Switzerland) and Prince Ali.
Blatter is a 79 year-old career football administrator, going for his fifth term as boss of a body governing the world’s most popular and important sport.
Prince Ali is a 39-year old, a relative newcomer to football administration and claimed to be the 43rd generation direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed.
The decision faced by the delegates in Zurich should be simple: which of the two men is the one to take football forward and clean up FIFA’s dreadfully tarnished image.
But it, sadly, won’t happen like that. What will determine the election’s outcome is politics and more precisely what the member association’s will gain from that outcome.
The favourite is Blatter and there is little doubt that the smart money will be on him. This is because under Blatter’s tenure, and that of his predecessor, the now disgraced Brazilian, Joao Havelange, the world’s poorer, developing countries have been looked after, both financially and in terms of access to major international tournaments.
And given that the world’s developing countries have a numerical majority, the likelihood is that Blatter will win.
But is it right that Blatter should win? The answer to that is no.
When Blatter was re-elected in 2011, amid much hullabaloo barely six months after the grubby exco vote that gave World Cup hosting rights to Russia and Qatar, he was given a wonderful opportunity and blew it. Already 75 at the time, it should have been his last term.
By not seeking re-election in 2015 and having nothing to lose, he could have embarked on a major reform of FIFA, leaving a serious Blatter legacy.
However, he didn’t do that. Some reforms were made, such as splitting the ethics committee into two chambers, giving it even more independence and an ability to prosecute as well as judge, and empowering the congress to appoint future World Cup hosts.
But this was tinkering on the edges. Four and a half years on, seven members of the executive committee who bizarrely voted for Qatar as World Cup host are still at FIFA’s top table.
Michael Garcia’s report on his investigation into the bidding process to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups still remains unpublished. Qatar remains as 2022 World Cup host, albeit now to hold it in November-December even though it as well as all others bid for a June-July tournament.
There has been little sign of a genuine will for reform. When the Sunday Times published some devastating revelations about corruption surrounding the World Cup bidding process, Blatter called it anti-African racism.
But FIFA is not alone when it comes to a lack of openness, transparency and regard for democratic principles. During the presidential election campaign, only UEFA among the confederations allowed Blatter’s rivals to address its congress. The bosses of the Asian and African confederations remain firmly behind the incumbent and want their members to vote for him.
This will not necessarily pass, of course. It’s a free vote and the declaration by the president of the AFC, Sheikh Salman, that Asia will vote as a bloc for Blatter is arrogant in the extreme and disrespectful of his own membership. FIFA’s member nations can vote for whoever they like or even abstain if they so wish.
Despite the long-running innuendo and the stench of corruption hovering over FIFA’s highest offices there has never been any hard evidence put forward that Blatter himself is corrupt or that he ever took a bribe.
But his era represented a period when FIFA lost much credibility and trust and Blatter will forever carry that label.
The stigma that FIFA is a corrupt body has to be erased once and for all. One fears that will not happen until Sepp Blatter goes.
