By David Owen
July 21 – The President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) is hoping that next year’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Presidential election will usher in a period of much-needed harmony in the region’s football affairs. Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, the former OPEC chairman who has become one of world sport’s foremost power brokers, said he thought the 2015 election “will found the unity of Asia”.
The comment comes at what may be a receptive moment, with the continent still licking its wounds after a dismal World Cup in which its four representatives – Australia, Iran, Japan and South Korea – failed to muster a single win between them.
Interviewed in Lausanne, the Olympic capital, where he was participating in the latest Olympic Summit in his capacity as President of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), Sheikh Ahmad answered a question about whether we might be nearing the end of the seemingly interminable political battles in Asian football as follows:
“I think what has been happening in Asia is there was a very big change because a lot of people wanted to change the system and want to be anti-corruption, and I think they have already reached a lot of goals from this plan.
“For that reason, I think in the 2015 election, you will found the unity of Asia.
“I am also very happy that Shaikh Salman [Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain], the new President, and his Executive Committee colleagues have developed the system – it’s not only the election.
“We have already changed a lot of our systems: we increased to 24 the number of teams for the finals of the Asian Cup [from 2019]; the professional league has been changed…I think people are very satisfied.”
Kuwait, of whose ruling family Sheikh Ahmad, honorary life President of the Kuwait Football Association, is a member, publicly backed Shaikh Salman, the clear-cut winner of the last AFC Presidential election in 2013 and, you have to feel, much the likeliest winner of the next one.
Sheikh Ahmad nonetheless voiced encouragement for Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, who recently lost out to Shaikh Salman over who should hold Asia’s FIFA vice-presidency.
“Ali can represent Asia,” he said. “I support Ali to be a member of FIFA as an individual. It was only the change of structure: that the President should be the FIFA vice-president…Ali starts to have experience now.”
The 38-year-old Jordanian campaigned successfully for the ban on Muslim women footballers wearing the hijab to be lifted.
“Hijab was good,” Sheikh Ahmad acknowledged, “and also he starts to analyse the culture of FIFA. We need people in FIFA who know the culture of FIFA and other continents, not only Asia. Ali is one of those people.”
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