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By Andrew Warshaw
October 7 – FIFA boss Sepp Blatter (pictured) faces a potential challenge to his long presidency from one of the most powerful men in Asian football.
In a surprise move, Chung Mong-joon of South Korea made the announcement at the Leaders in Football Conference in London, saying the time had come for world football’s governing body to think about embracing a change in direction.
Chung, a FIFA vice-president and prominent member of its executive committee, said he would consider taking on Blatter in May next year to prevent the 74-year-old Swiss winning a fourth straight term.
Within minutes of Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam ruling himself out of the job at the same conference, Chung took to the podium to announce it was “healthy” for FIFA to have competition for the top job.
“I have not thought of doing so before seriously but now I will think about it,” said Chung.
“It’s still too early to say there will be no contender next May.
“In order to keep a large organisation like FIFA healthy you need healthy competition.”
South Korea is one of the five contenders for the 2022 World Cup, the vote for which takes place on December 2 at the same time as the 2018 tournament.
After focusing on his country’s World Cup credentials, Chung then surprisingly switched to the FIFA presidency.
“Selection of the two (World Cup) venues is very important but so is the coming election in terms of the health of world football,” he said.
At present, Blatter, who has been in the job since 1998, is the only declared candidate for next May’s election.
Six years ago, a bid to unseat him by Issa Hayatou of Cameroon was swept aside, with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) boss suffering abject humiliation.
But Chung clearly feels he has enough support to mount a challenge.
“You need competition at the summit of anything – FIFA, or the summit of a mountain,” he said.
“We need to keep FIFA healthy.
“I have made this general statement that in order to keep an organisation like FIFA healthy you need competition.
“The world football family has to encourage competition – there are good people among existing FIFA executive committee members.”
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