By Andrew Warshaw
April 2 – The chief organiser of the 2022 Qatar World Cup insists he doesn’t need to win the upcoming vote for a place on the top table at FIFA simply so that he can “protect” the Gulf state’s right to stage the tournament.
Hassan Al-Thawadi, general secretary of the Qatar 2022 supreme committee, has a month of campaigning before he finds out whether he has beaten Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa of Bahrain in a head-to-head battle to join FIFA’s executive committee.
Salman, who came close to defeating former Asian Football Confederation Mohamed Bin Hammam in a bitter and ugly feud for the same seat in 2009, is also running for AFC President at elections in Kuala Lumpur on May 2.
Al-Thawadi, the lesser known of the two candidates, is currently campaigning around Asia. Al-Thawadi dismisses criticisms that he needs to safeguard 2022 among FIFA’s top brass who voted for Qatar in a landslide ballot in December 2010, even though some of them have since either resigned or been suspended over a spate of corruption allegations.
“I am very confident about our bid and I don’t need to be in the (executive) committee to protect it,” said Al-Thawadi whilst on the campaign trail. “We’ve got our legal position which is well-established and secure and our views are well-known and the initiatives that we are taking will vindicate themselves.” Al-Thawadi told AP what he wants most is for the world’s largest continent to have a bigger say in the way the game is run.
“Asia needs to be a voice. It needs to come to the table in FIFA as it has done so over the years but it needs to have more influence in the world of football but more importantly, Asia needs to develop itself and raise its football a lot more.”
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