By Andrew Warshaw
24 November -FIFA’s much-touted reform package will finally be put before the organisation’s top brass next week amid considerable doubt about whether it will go far enough to help wipe out corruption.
After several behind-closed-doors meetings and precious little published information, former Olympics supremo Francois Carrard, who heads Fifa’s Reform Committee – ironically set up by the currently suspended Sepp Blatter – will hand over his proposals to the executive committee for rubber-stamping before being sent to the full Fifa Congress on Feb 26 for approval and implementation.
Earlier this month in New York, Carrard defended the fact that his panel was packed with confederation officials with potential vested interests. It now remains to be seen whether the raft of measures being proposed does or does not include term limits for senior officials as well as for the Fifa president and whether Fifa’s front-line sponsors and other key stakeholders will be satisfied with what is put on the table.
Executive committee members will also be updated on the separate American and Swiss investigations into corruption that has brought Fifa to its knees. The two-day meeting Wednesday and Thursday at Fifa hq was originally intended to have been held in Japan on Dec. 17-18 on the sidelines of the Club World Cup but was switched to Zurich in September.
That was because Blatter, who was still in charge at the time, was wary of visiting countries that have extradition agreements with the United States. Since then, ironically, Blatter has been suspended from duty in the wake the Swiss criminal investigation into financial wrongdoing and will be barred from attending the final session of the year, taking place in the same building from where he has run the organisation for 18 years .
Two new delegates from South America could attend to take over from colleagues implicated in the US corruption probe. As things stand now, South America has only one of its allocated three delegates left on the exco and CONMEBOL, scheduled to meet this week in Rio de Janeiro, could appoint replacements for Marco Polo del Nero of Brazil and Luis Bedoya of Colombia.
Meanwhile the first exco session of 2016 has been confirmed for Feb. 24, two days before the presidential election to replace Blatter who risks not being present to hand over to his successor if, as seems likely, he is handed a multi-year ban from the game in the next few weeks over and above the current 90-day suspension.