Decent man, strong principles and some seriously sensible ideas for modernising the game. But can Jerome Champagne really become the Comeback King at FIFA?
The more one analyses Champagne’s somewhat poorly structured launch announcement on Monday that he is to stand for president of world football’s governing body next year, the more one has to question not only whether he chose the right place to unveil his manifesto but also his motives and whether there is a hidden agenda.
If Champagne believed that choosing the very site where the English FA was founded 150 ago and saying all the right things about the much maligned English media would have got him off to a positive start, he will have been disappointed.
The reaction among most of those invited was of a man with admirable intentions but next to no chance of actually winning the vote in late May next year. Especially when Champagne freely admitted, to jaw-dropping incredulity, that he would not be able to beat his one-time boss at FIFA, Sepp Blatter, if the veteran Swiss decides to stand for a fifth mandate at the age of 78.
It may have been painfully honest but it was hardly the most effective exercise in self-promotion. So what was Champagne, who served FIFA for 11 years and was deputy general secretary under Blatter until being unceremoniously “pushed out”, as he puts it, actually hoping to achieve?
Does he know something the rest of us don’t, in other words that Blatter will end up deciding not to stand?
Or, more plausibly, could it be that he has formed some kind of tacit, calculated allegiance with Blatter in order to eventually return to high office at FIFA? Could it be that it is all a ploy to flush out and ultimately crush the hopes of other potential rivals, most notably UEFA boss Michel Platini with whom there is no love lost?
Stranger things have happened. Certainly, were both Platini and Champagne to stand, it seems more than likely the European vote would be split, playing into the hands of Blatter. The noises coming out of Platini’s camp suggest more and more that he may stay on at UEFA and finish the job he started. His fellow Frenchman’s bid to go for the top job in world football may cement that view.
Champagne’s decision not to employ a lobbying team also merits scrutiny. The former French diplomat, who has lived in four different Continents and visited over 150 countries, is not short of a dollar or two. But funding his campaign with his own money without a slick public relations outfit to help his cause is virtually unheard of and judging by his at times rambling analysis of how to right the game’s wrongs, he certainly could do with someone to streamline his delivery. It was far too short of bullet-point detail.
No-one, however, should under-estimate Champagne’s global network of contacts or his well-argued vision for the future. He is a persuasive operator, a deep thinker and has an incredible breadth of knowledge (I know that from many a private chat). He genuinely sees himself as a positive evangelist for change.
But therein perhaps lies the problem. Champagne’s straightforward, well-meaning proposals for rebalancing the game on and off the pitch and bridging the gap between rich and poor may win him friends among the football public at large. But they are less likely, with so much self-interest around FIFA and its confederations, to win him votes among those who matter when it comes to election time in late May next year.
He says he wants national federations, clubs and leagues to have more influence, and the six FIFA confederations less. Is he sure he can convince FIFA’s 209 voting countries to put their faith in him to bring this about? Is he sure that, having been forced out of FIFA in 2010 in an unsavoury coup he insists he is no longer bitter about, that enough time has elapsed to make an unlikely comeback?
Champagne insists he is happy to have been working as an international consultant for a raft of would-be new members of the FIFA family. He can certainly open doors others can’t. I have seen it at first hand.
But one still gets the impression he feels he has unfinished business. Having been on the sidelines of the FIFA hierarchy for several years, this looks more and more like an attempt to get back on the inside in order to get his views across and get his ideas implemented – whether or not that means as President or somewhere else in the hierarchy.
Interestingly, Champagne felt compelled on Monday to shower Blatter with praise, describing the man whom he actually helped win in 1998 and again in 2002 as being “married to football”. And Blatter, as we know, loves compliments.
He also made the point of calling for a “fair and transparent” election process including political-style televised debates among all the candidates in front of the 209 voting national associations and members of the public.
Another laudable idea but there are already many who doubt he will still be around by then to contest it. He says he intends to stay the course. Not everyone is convinced. Everything could depend on who he is up against. The next few months will determine that…
Andrew Warshaw is chief correspondent at Insideworldfootball. Contact him at moc.l1734830362labto1734830362ofdlr1734830362owedi1734830362sni@w1734830362ahsra1734830362w.wer1734830362dna1734830362