By Paul Nicholson
February 23 – The first concrete signs of dealmaking between candidates in the FIFA presidential election race became evident yesterday following a meeting between South African candidate Tokyo Sexwale and UEFA’s top gun Gianni Infantino, with Sexwale saying he is “open to negotiations and alliances”.
Infantino later said that he was confident of taking more than half of Africa’s votes in Friday’s election, while his Twitter feed was stacked with pictures of himself and Tokyo Sexwale on a visit to Robben Island, where Sexwale was famously imprisoned for 13 years with Nelson Mandela.
Sexwale had originally invited all the presidential candidates to Cape Town, but in the end only Infantino made the trip,
That Sexwale is still in the running is a surprise to many observers who had expected he would pull out before now, and particularly after failing to get the endorsement of the 54-member African confederation CAF, some of whose members were dismissive of Sexwale’s campaign.
CAF is unlikely to vote as an entire block behind one candidate and Liberia’s Musa Bility, who failed FIFA’s integrity check to be able to run in the election, has already been rolled out by Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein to support him in his campaign. But Infantino’s claim that he has half of Africa is a big one. Shaikh Salman Bin Al-Khalifa is widely reckoned to hold the majority lead in Africa having reeived the endorsement of CAF earlier this month.
Infantino had already made some progress in Africa with specific territory visits, in particular jetting into South Sudan on the way to Kigali for a CAF event. If he can gain Sexwale’s support and votes then he could feasibly make inroads, particualrly if he can gather the warmth in Africa for UEFA’s currently banned president Michel Platini. But there are a lot of ‘ifs’ in this thinking.
The problem is no-one is entirely sure how many votes Sexwale can command. The fact that only Infantino travelled to Cape Town suggest that it might not be too many. Frenchman Jerome Champagne, who has worked extensively in the region with individual federations, is understood to hold more ’emotional’ support but whether that translates into ballot box support remains to be seen.
Speaking at a press conference after the Robben Island tour Sexwale said he was a “realist” over his chances, saying: “It’s like the Vatican, you never know what will come out.”
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