Al Serkal bites back with letter to FIFA and AFC members

By Andrew Warshaw
May 1 – Any chance of Thursday’s Asian football Presidential election vote being cleanly contested has totally evaporated following an unsavoury 11th-hour spat between the two front-runners, both of whom have thrown verbal grenades in each other’s direction, prompting the intervention of FIFA.

Even by the standards of Asian football, the respective barbs from the camps of Sheikh Salman of Bahrain and Yousuf Al-Serkal of the United Arab Emirates have heaped humiliation on the entire process and are likely to reverberate long after the vote in Kuala Lumpur for the next President of the Asian Football Confederation.

On Wednesday, Kuwaiti supporters of Sheikh Salman, citing an article in the Gulf Daily News, accused those sympathetic to former Qatari AFC president Mohamed bin Hammam – banned from all football acitivities for life – of drumming up support for Al-Serkal.

FIFA responded by warning the Qatar FA that action would be taken if any rules had been broken, a statement that appeared to take sides and back Salman’s case, infuriating Al-Serkal’s camp as well as sources close to bin Hamman.

As a result, Al-Serkal has himself now fired off a letter to FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke, the AFC secretariat and every member association in a strongly-worded defence of his position.

“I refer to the Kuwait Football Association’s statement with regards to the media article published in the Gulf Daily News (a Bahraini publication) on 28 April 2013, and their attempt to deceive you, the member associations, on the involvement of the former AFC President in my campaign,” he wrote.

“I hereby categorically REJECT and take offence in any suggestion that my campaign is supported by Mr. Mohammed bin Hammam or any parties representing him. During my campaign, I have NEVER engaged Mr. Bin Hammam or his representatives in any of my activities and in any of my travels.”

Al-Serkal has long accused Salman’s camp, in turn, of being supported unfairly by the Olympic Council of Asia which is based in Kuwait. “I also would like to tell Kuwait Football Association (KFA) that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” his missive continued.

Urging delegates from the 46 voting Asian countries to differentiate between “truth and fiction”, Al-Serkal entreated them not to be taken in by being bombarded with “rumours and fancy stories”.

“I absolutely reject and in fact despise being a puppet to another person, unlike another candidate,” he wrote in a clear reference to Salman.

“I am my own man running an independent campaign, free from any non-football organisations and free from Mr. Bin Hammam. Do you want to elect a President who doesn’t have the capacity to run or administrate his own campaign?”