29 April – FIFA presidential candidate Louis Figo is heading to Bahrain for the Asian Football Confederation Congress, hoping to win votes with his platform promise of increased future World Cup final places for the AFC’s members.
In an email exchange with Reuters he said: “I think the growing popularity and quality of football in the different regions represented within AFC are arguments in favour of opening the debate around expanding the World Cup to 40 or 48 teams with additional teams weighted towards non-European nations.”
Warming to his theme of making everything bigger and better and more inclusive, he said he wanted more non-Europeans involved in working for FIFA.
“I also want to bring more people from non-European confederations into the FIFA staff,” he said. “A staff that would really represent the world and benefit from multicultural human resources. There are a lot of competent people in the AFC federations who could do a good job in FIFA.”
Should Mr Figo manage to get his feet under the big desk at FIFA’s doubtless palatial and European-style colonial offices in Zurich, he could do a lot better than take a harder look at the nationality of his serfs.
FIFA currently employs around 400 people from more than 40 countries. Their average age is 39 and, nearly 50% are women.
But the idea of shipping in one person from every national federation (perhaps two to make a gender balance) has an appealing quaintness to it. Perhaps make them dress up in FIFA badged national costume to emphasise their diversity.
One wonders if Figo is catching that old English football ‘foot-in-mouth’ disease. Or perhaps he just became a bit carried away with the moment when he was doing his email.
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