By Andrew Warshaw
May 21 – Michael van Praag has withdrawn from next week’s FIFA presidential election campaign and has joined forces with Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein in a strategic bid to oust Sepp Blatter.
The Dutch FA president today confirmed he is pulling out and will give details at a hastily arranged press conference in the Netherlands later in the day when Prince Ali, FIFA’s outgoing vice-president, will also make a statement.
Yesterday van Praag’s office denied there was any imminent move but speculation has been rife for weeks that at least one of the candidates would pull out of the May 29 ballot at the FIFA Congress.
The third candidate in the race to unseat Blatter, Luis Figo, has also denied that he is on the verge of pulling out though that now seems increasingly likely.
The trio held talks close to UEA headquarters in Switzerland last week but could not agree on the best way forward.
“After thorough deliberation and reflection with different involved parties and stakeholders, Michael van Praag decided to withdraw his candidacy to become the next FIFA president and to join forces with presidential candidate Prince Ali Al Hussein,” Van Praag’s statement said.
A spokesman for van Praag told Insideworldfootball that Prince Ali would also be attending the press conference in person though this was not immediately confirmed by the Jordanian FA president’s office.
A year ago, van Praag, who says he has always liked Blatter as a person, famously savaged his running of FIFA at a stormy UEFA meeting that preceded the 2014 FIFA congress, resulting in the veteran Swiss saying he had never been so insulted.
“The image of FIFA has been tarnished by everything that has happened over the last years,” Van Praag said at the time. “People tend not to take you seriously any more. That is not good for FIFA, not good for the game, not good for the world.”
Despite such ferocity, the Dutch FA chief said back then he would not stand. But his mind was changed after UEFA president Michel Platini ruled himself out, entering the campaign three days before the deadline at the end of January.
Van Praag said from the outset he was only interested in one term as a transitional FIFA president but by standing, he risked splitting the anti-Blatter vote, leaving many national associations unsure who to support.
By pulling out, he will lose the chance to address delegates for 15 minutes under election rules. But with his power base very much in Europe, he and Prince Ali have presumably done the maths and concluded that combining their support would present the best chance of upsetting the odds even though Prince Ali’s own Asian confederation, or a majority of it, is solidly behind the present incumbent.
Rumours of at least one withdrawal before the ballot picked up steam once it became clear that none of the challengers to Blatter’s throne was able to secure sufficient momentum during a rushed lobbying circuit of the confederation congresses. Apart from UEFA, none of the other five confederations – each with a majority pro-Blatter membership – allowed the challengers permission to address delegates at their regional congresses.
Whatever the newly-agreed strategy for taking on Blatter, the 79-year-old Swiss is still runaway favourite to win a fifth term.
But Prince Ali, FIFA’s outgoing Asian vice-president who has been on the executive committee for four years and, even at 39, has a network of contacts which the other contenders can’t match, has always believed he could put up a credible fight. Now he has his chance – whether or not Figo, the rank outsider, also stands.
The question is whether Blatter wins in the first round, when he would need a two-thirds majority, or is forced into a second round of voting.
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