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Where to now for FIFA?

The FIFA executive committee, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen 26 February 2016 as the date on which Sepp Blatter will finally depart as FIFA president and his replacement will be elected, stretching Blatter’s incumbency as far as it possibly could.

FIFA

Three of the key players in FIFA's past, present and future: Michel Platini, Prince Ali and Sepp Blatter (Getty) Source: Getty Images

No surprise there. The bigger issue is who will or should replace Blatter and what difference a new president will make to an organisation tattered by the stigma of deeply embedded graft and corruption.

Will having a new president make a telling difference? If so who should he or she be? And if not, what then?

The popular view is that, above all, what FIFA needs is a new president. This is due to the pre-supposition that the endemic corruption is all Sepp Blatter’s fault and that once he goes the place will be clean.
This of course is nonsense. While it is undeniable that Blatter needs to go it will take more than a new president to ensure FIFA is clean and that wide scale corruption at its executive levels is no longer possible.
The first thing to understand is that football at a global level is very difficult to govern. FIFA, with its 209 member nations, is the closest thing we have to a world government. The vast diversity of the football world, with its myriad of cultures, histories, races, languages, customs, religions, political systems, values etc, throws up massive challenges when it comes to governance let alone administration or management.

For example, in this diverse cosmos, one man’s act of corruption is another man’s way of normally and acceptably conducting business.

What FIFA needs is broad constitutional reform not just changes of personality.



That can start with defining, or re-defining, the role of the president.

There is no doubt that under Blatter, the presidency became far too powerful. At one time even Blatter defined himself as FIFA’s CEO, which is exactly what he was – a salaried chief executive with executive powers.
This should never have been the case and only came about when Blatter, then not a man of independent means, became president.

His predecessor, Joao Havelange, though later to be found to have been corrupt, was independently wealthy and never drew a salary from FIFA. Though Havelange was powerful, influential and quite dictatorial, he was in fact a non-executive president, much like a non-executive chairman of a corporation or association. The executive duties were carried out by the FIFA secretary general who, under Havelange, was Blatter himself.

I believe the role of the president should revert to being a non-executive, non-salaried one. The president and his board, the executive committee, should drive vision and policy but should leave execution to the secretary general. Never again should the president be allowed to become as powerful as Blatter has been.

And the powers of the executive committee should be equally pruned. Its members should, above all, be de-coupled from making decisions that involve finance, such as the awarding of broadcast rights, marketing and sponsorship contracts and World Cup hosting rights.

So who will or should be the next president? More importantly what kind of person should be elected to that role?

In the first instance let us dismiss seriously considering the puppetry show of iconic ex-players, like Zico, Luis Figo and David Ginola as genuine candidates. It takes more than the ability to take good corners or free kicks to be the governor of world football.

I have no problem with ex-players being given a role in managing football but, please, let them be people of genuine ability, vision and experience.

The front runner appears to be Michel Platini the only member of FIFA’s current top brass to have announced his candidature.
His likely ascension to the FIFA presidency is worrying. Platini voted for Qatar to host a summer World Cup, the reasons for which were never satisfactorily explained. Almost immediately after the vote, he began to champion moves to change the World Cup dates to the Qatari winter, in other words change the specifics of a tender after it has been awarded. This was improper, immoral and, in most jurisdictions, totally illegal.

Then there was the FIFA congress in Mauritius in 2013 where Platini’s UEFA bloc scuppered the reform proposal that would have seen the president’s mandate limited to two terms of four years. This, we suspect, was only because Platini wants to be FIFA president and he wants to be there longer than eight years.

Then there is the nagging matter of . Platini denies any connection but it smells bad none the less and the ethics committee would be justified in investigating it.

And would Platini be willing to be a non-executive president with no salary? One has to doubt it.

Also worrying is that the west Asian power bloc of sheikhs, in particular Sheikh Salman of Bahrain and Sheikh Ahmed of Kuwait, have now thrown their weight behind a Platini bid. It shows they are not interested in genuine reform. They will be supporting a candidate who will probably be a salaried executive president, just like Blatter, and one who doesn’t believe in limiting the presidential mandate to two terms.

Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, who lost out to Blatter in a vote for the presidency in May, would certainly fit the bill in many ways. He is a clean skin with no political baggage. But at a time when we all crave for democracy and transparency in FIFA, I worry about having a president who hails from the ruling family of an absolutist monarchy.
Then there is Chung Mong Joon, a Korean billionaire from the Hyundai corporate family, a long-term opponent and critic of Blatter, who has been out of the limelight of late but who may well be ready to make a tilt for the big job again.

He may not be a bad candidate notwithstanding his large political baggage. As long ago as 2002, when I last interviewed him, he was advocating a non-executive presidency with limited terms. And he was right when he said recently that there is no principle that the FIFA president has to be a European.

In my view the following are the must reforms for FIFA if it is to have any chance of reclaiming broad credibility:

  1. Fixed maximum terms for the president and members of the executive committee – two terms of four years.
  2. The president to be non-executive and the executive committee to be a non-executive board of governance.
  3. The president and members of the executive committee to be non-salaried. Money cannot be a motive for wanting to fill such high roles.
  4. Independent committees to be de-politicised, that is to say the members should be elected or appointed on merit not on what confederation they represent.
  5. Executive committee members – including the president – should be free to come from anywhere from within or outside the game and should be elected by universal suffrage by the congress. They should not be nominated by the confederations which are all too powerful and are driven primarily by politics.
  6. Stringent integrity checks to be made on all candidates for FIFA office. Such checks to be carried out by the ethics committee or another independent committee especially set up for the purpose.
  7. The mode of World Cup hosting to be re-examined and consideration given to multiple hosts, as many as eight with each host nation hosting a first phase group and one round of 16 match, four of the eight to host the quarter finals, two the semifinals and one to host the final. The unnecessary third-place playoff to be done away with.
  8. Furthermore no country whose political system doesn’t guarantee minimal standards of human rights should have the right to apply to host the World Cup. Under this rule neither Russia nor Qatar would qualify to host the World Cup.
Item 7 will raise some eyebrows and I understand why. But something needs to be done to lessen the weight of importance of World Cup hosting. History tells us that nothing attracts graft and corruption like the process of finding a World Cup host.

The new rule that future World Cup hosts will be chosen by the congress will not eliminate this. If there are candidate countries out there rich enough to bribe a dozen people they are rich enough to bribe fifty or even a hundred.

And equally important is the easing of costs to a single host country. Qatar might be able to afford spending squillions on World Cup stadia and then dismantle them but there are few other countries that can do the same.

The derelict World Cup stadia that now stand idle in Brazil are a testimony to the folly of having a single nation host. Under this suggestion the most number of matches one country will host is 10. They could do that with just two or three stadiums or even one.


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8 min read
Published 30 July 2015 11:49am
Updated 30 July 2015 2:11pm
By Les Murray

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