09 January 2025 GMT: 06:41

Prince Ali ducks out of Brussels summit

Prince Ali 3

By Andrew Warshaw
January 20 – FIFA presidential candidate Prince Ali bin Al Hussein will be conspicuous by his absence when a new pressure group campaigning for greater reform convene at the European Parliament for the first time tomorrow.

Prince Ali would have been the star attraction at the inaugural session of the NewFifaNow movement which is pulling together football administrators, politicians and sports politics experts from across Europe and beyond.

Prince Ali, who declared his intention last month to stand and was the first of FIFA’s executive committee members to push for Michael Garcia’s infamous report into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid process to be published, had been invited to tomorrow’s summit as one of the main participants.

But with his native Jordan participating in the Asian Cup in Australia, it is understood it was impossible for him to fit the Brussels debate into his schedule.

Had he done so, he would have shared a platform for the first time with fellow prospective presidential candidate Jerome Champagne, the former FIFA deputy general secretary who has agreed to attend as has Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the former head of Chilean football who has yet to make up his mind whether to run as well.

Among the organizers of the NewFifaNow campaign, designed to keep the heat on FIFA following years of scandal and the recent World Cup bid process inquiry, is Damian Collins, a long-time critic of the way football’s world governing body has been run.

“We need to see how we can work together to exert more pressure on Fifa,” said Collins. “There needs to be far greater transparency. Wednesday is not an end in itself but it’s the first time we’ve ever had an international meeting of this nature at the European parliament.

“It’s a springboard in terms of engaging government bodies and public institutions to get more involved in questioning FIFA about the way it has failed to address the need for reform, and to get more people to speak out as we get closer to the election. The key thing is there has to be change at the top. If there isn’t, the cries will get even louder.”

From the anti-Fifa lobby perhaps but probably not from a majority of Fifa’s 209 voting associations who seem likely to re-elect Blatter on May 29 in Zurich. Yet Collins countered: “Change doesn’t happen overnight, and we are in this for as long as it takes.”

“Last year, the world celebrated the 25th anniversary of something many people said would ‘never’ happen – the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sixteen years ago, people said the Olympic movement could never get past its corruption scandals. History shows that change can and does happen, even in seemingly impenetrable circumstances.”

Collins is refusing to criticise former French international David Ginola’s left-field announcement last week that he was throwing his hat into the ring to take on Blatter despite being sponsored by a bookmaking firm.

Ginola was an ambassador for England’s doomed World Cup bid but was exposed at last week’s campaign launch as having little or no experience in football politics or administration and his prospective candidature is being largely viewed as a publicity stunt.

“I welcome anyone who is serious about reform,” said Collins. “My concern is not how people structure their campaign.”

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