So FIFA President Sepp Blatter is a step nearer securing a fifth term as boss of world football, following this week’s announcement by his UEFA counterpart Michel Platini, probably his most credible potential challenger, that he would not stand against him in next year’s election. That means that world football’s governing body may be a step nearer possibly losing its direct, active representation in world sport’s most powerful club – the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
At present, three members of FIFA’s ruling executive committee are also IOC members: Blatter himself, Issa Hayatou, Cameroonian President of the African Football Confederation (CAF), and Lydia Nsekera of Burundi, FIFA’s first elected woman executive committee member.
As things stand, however, all three could lose their places in one body or the other over the next three years.
Blatter has been an IOC member since 1999, the year after he became FIFA President.
Because his membership pre-dates 11 December 1999, Blatter is able to remain in the IOC until the end of the calendar year in which his 80th birthday falls.
That puts his Olympic retirement date, under the current charter, at 31 December 2016 – well before the end of his fifth FIFA term, should he indeed secure it.
By coincidence, Hayatou’s last day as an IOC member may also be 31 December 2016.
Though he is 10 years Blatter’s junior, the West African joined the club only in 2001, meaning that his retirement is fixed for the end of the year in which he reaches the age of 70.
Nsekera’s problem, by contrast, lies not with the IOC: she is a stripling of 47, leaving her free, I think, to retain her place until 2037 – the year after Blatter is due to celebrate his 100th birthday.
But she was ousted last year after nine years as President of the Burundi Football Federation.
So her issue, I suspect, may be extending her time on FIFA’s executive committee beyond her current mandate which runs until 2017.
Could FIFA really go from three active IOC members to zero in such a short time-frame?
It could (though Blatter and Hayatou would very likely be granted honorary IOC member status); but with football such a powerful force in world sport and an important ingredient in the Summer Olympics in terms of star quality, ticket sales and spreading the event beyond the host-city, it probably won’t.
I can think of three ways in which the approaching void might be prevented – four if you allow what seems the increasingly remote possibility of Blatter being defeated in next year’s FIFA Presidential election by a younger man (or woman) eligible to join the IOC without breaching its age limits.
a) The IOC’s rules on this might be changed under IOC President Thomas Bach’s reformist Olympic Agenda 2020 initiative.
Most simply, the places of those IOC members voted into the club by virtue of holding a senior position on an international sport federation (IF) could be said to extend for the duration of their IF posting, irrespective of age.
With the IOC gearing up for changes, such an apparently modest reform is perhaps achievable, even if it is hard to see how it squares with the Movement’s youth agenda.
Blatter actually told his fellow IOC members earlier this year that imposing an age limit could be tantamount to an act of discrimination.
“The age limit is a problem which we also considered during the reform at FIFA,” Blatter said.
“We concluded that imposing an age limit is an act of discrimination…
“It is not normal to impose an age limit on individuals.
“The only justified age limit that exists at the civil level is when a person comes of age, but in sports terms age limit as far as I understand it is discriminatory.”
b) Nsekera might manage to retain her place on FIFA’s executive committee beyond 2017, leaving her perfectly placed to act as sole direct, active intermediary between the respective inner sanctums of the world’s two most powerful sports bodies.
c) The name of another FIFA executive committee member could be put forward with a view to him (or her) being accepted into the IOC at the 2017 Session.
This, in many ways, is the most intriguing possibility, since it might well be interpreted as Blatter, in effect, nominating his successor at the head of world football.
Looking at today’s FIFA vice presidents, you would imagine it would come down to a straight choice between Platini and Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands and CONCACAF, the Confederation for North and Central America and the Caribbean – although I fancy that Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, President of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) might also enter the picture.
Webb, who will be 50 next month, is seen in some circles as the coming man of international football administration, but Shaikh Salman, 48, is proving an adroit politician in a particularly fractious football continent and has powerful allies.
We should know by the end of this year whether option a) has been adopted.
Right now, aware as I am of the veteran FIFA President’s outstanding political skills, I would say that it could go either way.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.