By Andrew Warshaw in Zurich
February 26 – The FIFA presidential election as expected moved into a second round of voting today as none of the four remaining candidates in the race after Tokyo Sexwale’s withdrawal managed to achieve the required two-thirds majority.
Joint favourites Shaikh Salman and Gianno Infantino, both of whom had been supremely confident of victory going into the secret ballot, were forced to wait a nail-biting further few hours before discovering which of them had been chosen to clean up world football’s governing body after the 18-year era of Sepp Blatter.
Most predicted a close-run affair and so it proved as Infantino secured 88 votes in the first round to Shaikh Salman’s 85. Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, the Jordanian who lost to Blatter in May, came third with 27 with Jerome Champagne managing only seven.
Following the row over transparent voting booths, FIFA’s acting general secretary Markus Kattner mandated federations to place their mobile phones and cameras in a tray beside the two booths either side of the auditorium to avoid photographing their ballot papers, such was the sensitivity surrounding the most important election in FIFA history.
You could almost feel the tension at the cavernous Hallenstadion where Blatter was elected for the fifth and final time last May, only to announce a few days later he was ending his mandate prematurely under huge pressure over FIFA’s corruption crisis.
The result effectively spelled the end of the road for both Champagne and Prince Ali. But the latter was suddenly plunged into the role of kingmaker in terms of whether his votes would go to his Asian arch-rival or to the UEFA general secretary, a simple majority among Fifa’s 207 eligible voting federations being needed for victory in the second round.
It was the first time since 1974, when Joao Havelange went head to head with Stanley Rous, that the election had gone to a second round.
If the campaigns of Champagne and prince Ali predictably came up short, neither of the two front-runners could any longer be as bullishly confident of victory as they were 12 hours previously as once again in Fifa elections it became clear that promises were not kept.
On paper, Prince Ali’s Asian votes should move to Shaikh Salman, hoping to become the first person from his Continent to run FIFA. But given the fraught relationship between the pair over a number of issues, nothing could be taken for granted. It is possible a secret deal has been done for Ali’s friends in Asia to snub Salman whatever happens.
Much also depended on how the rest of Prince Ali’s supporters, probably from CONCACAF, decided to proceed. The United States, having endorsed Prince Ali on the eve of the ballot, seemed certain to switch to Infantino – and there was speculation the rest of Ali’s CONCACAF supporters, most likely from the Caribbean, were likely to do the same to try and push Europe’s candidate over the line. Yet with the ballot so tight, it was also being predicted that Champagne’s small group of first-round backers could prove just as decisive.
If Infantino were to win, it would prove a remarkable coup for the 45-year-old Swiss-Italian whose multi-lingual skills might have helped his cause but who only entered the race once his boss, Uefa president Michel Platini, was banned by Fifa’s ethics committee and no other credible European candidate was prepared to take up the mantle.