United States attorney general Loretta Lynch may change FIFA, but old school football politics is likely to prove an altogether tougher dragon to slay.
How else to react to Friday’s news from Kigali, where two of world football’s six regional confederations – the African Football Confederation (CAF) and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) – signed a memorandum of understanding on football development?
There is, of course, nothing remotely wrong with the existence of such a document linking two of the larger regional football groupings. The timing of its announcement, however, just 42 days before a FIFA Presidential election in which the AFC President, Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa, is a leading candidate, strikes me as profoundly questionable.
To cite only the most obvious consequence, it meant that a nice photograph of Shaikh Salman and CAF President Issa Hayatou – who also happens to be Acting FIFA President – has gone into circulation at a time when African national associations, like others, will be pondering who to vote for.
Did I sense some unease in Hayatou’s comments, released with the announcement, that seemed to be playing it down as much as possible?
The signing of the MoU was, the CAF President said, “not new in the long existing relationship between two confederations”. Today, we were here to “re-launch a cooperation that will be beneficial to the two Confederations after several months of work”.
Contrast this with the tone of Shaikh Salman’s allusion to a “memorable day” and his reference to the two continents’ “aspirations and expectations” of staging future football tournaments “not only the World Cup but also in women and age group competitions”.
Whether or not Team Salman joined up the dots – and personally I find it hard to believe it would not occur to them that the deal might apply some modest impetus to their quest for African votes – the question of a possible impact on the FIFA Presidential campaign did not, as you might expect, escape the notice of the other Asian runner in this high-stakes race – Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan.
He has now written to FIFA’s ad hoc electoral committee informing them of his concerns and asking them to examine the matter, asserting that the timing of the MoU “looks like a blatant attempt to engineer a bloc vote”.
I would be surprised if Prince Ali’s intervention makes much of a dent in his rival’s campaign, although it did prompt a response from the Salman camp emphasising how long talks about an agreement had been going on for and expressing astonishment at “my friend’s comments, which are wholly dismissed and entirely inaccurate”.
I would be even more surprised if Africa – with its hefty Francophone and majority Muslim contingents, and, in Tokyo Sexwale of South Africa, its very own candidate in the race – did vote as a bloc.
I nonetheless find the entire episode rather depressing – and here’s why.
Shaikh Salman recently produced a detailed 24-page campaign platform which, as I said at the time, struck me as reassuringly level-headed and, in some respects, quite refreshing.
For example, he refrained from making an unequivocal commitment to expand the World Cup, even though this could prove a potent vote-winner.
He urged an intensification of efforts to develop the women’s game, drawing unfavourable comparisons with other sports and making the link between success in this domain and the possible impact on FIFA finances, even though women are likely to have little say (most regrettably) on how most national associations vote.
And on development spending in general, he spoke of introducing “the toughest ever control mechanisms any sports or other not-for-profit body knows today”. Yes, he also asserted that such spending needed to be “significantly increased”, yet resisted any temptation to stipulate which regions of the world would be the main beneficiaries.
For me – and admittedly I don’t have a vote on February 26 – what happened in Kigali has done much to undermine the positive impression created by that campaign platform document.
I doubt that MoU-gate will have a significant impact on the all-important outcome of next month’s vote.
I am not particularly inclined to take Prince Ali’s side: there is a big difference between applying a modest push to one’s regional electoral prospects and attempting to “engineer a bloc vote”; plus, like some on social media, I am cynical enough to wonder whether his team might have been tempted to do the same thing if he were AFC President.
And I obviously cannot clamber inside the heads of Shaikh Salman and his advisers to ascertain their true intentions.
But really, how difficult would it have been to postpone the signing for a couple of months?
And, given the very limited upside and the potential for misinterpreting motives and further besmirching world football’s tattered image albeit in a small way, wouldn’t that have been the common sense, never mind the right, thing to do?
I have written before about the power of the confederations and how somehow reining it in is essential if we are to have any hope of turning FIFA into a model governing body.
In spite of everything that has gone on in recent months, I can still detect little if any sign of this happening.
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.