By Paul Nicholson
February 18 – Meetings of Asian Football Confederation (AFC) member associations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to discuss the FIFA reform proposals led to reiterated support for Shaikh Salman in his bid for the FIFA presidency, and speculation from observers as UEFA’s candidate Gianni Infantino enterprisingly turned up to lobby federations.
Infantino was the only one of the FIFA presidential candidates in Kuala Lumpur with both the Asian candidates Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan and Bahrain’s Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa absent from the AFC meetings.
None of the FIFA presidential candidates had been invited to present to the AFC but Infantino reportedly made progress with Asian federations as he lobbied members on the fringes.
How far he can split the Asian vote remains to be seen with Richard Lai, the AFC marketing committee chairman from Guam, saying: “Our vision is One Asia, One Goal. Our goal is a united Asia and to demonstrate that we must unite behind our President in the FIFA election.
“At present Asia has two candidates for the FIFA Presidency. We must unite behind the one who will deliver these reforms and that is the AFC President. The AFC should not just support the reform process but be a part of it.”
The commitment to the FIFA reforms and desire to be a player in those reforms is becoming an increasing theme as CONCACAF similarly issued a statement of unanimous support for the reforms following a meeting of their federations last weekend.
Shaikh Salman, although not present in Kuala Lumpur, was quoted in an AFC statement expressing his thanks to his AFC supporter and saying that he was confident he was gathering a broad-based support.
“Thanks to that encouragement I have been able to enter this election with the overwhelming support of my Confederation, and that is clearly a massive help in my campaign. I was grateful for the unanimous show of support from this Executive Committee in Delhi.
“I have been in constant contact with colleagues within the FIFA ExCo, in the other Confederations, and around the world. I have also done a lot of travelling outside Asia: to Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and Africa.
“I have received significant support around the world, and am happy with how the campaign has gone so far. So I go into the final week with confidence for the future of FIFA.”
Salman is the current favourite to win the election race but Infantino is a closing second and has similarly lobbied confederations hard, significantly shored up his European base and made inroads into the Americas where, although not publicly stated, seems to have won the important regional support of the US.
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