By Andrew Warshaw
March 24 – The head of Asian football has been rebuffed in his attempts within FIFA to gain additional powers of office against the wishes of his members.
Last week, INSIDEworldfootball reported that Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, who won a landslide victory to become Asian Football Confederation president, faced a potential revolt after trying to gain approval for the next elected AFC chief to automatically also assume the position of FIFA vice-president.
The idea was overwhelmingly thrown out by the AFC’s own congress, prompting Salman to take the issue to FIFA’s executive committee.
But his plan was blocked again on the constitutional grounds that this was a question for the AFC and not the world federation. It is understood his proposal was withdrawn when it became clear it had virtually no support among his fellow exco members.
Although the presidents of UEFA (Europe), CONCACAF (central/north America/the Caribbean) and CAF (Africa) all double up as vice-presidents of FIFA, that is not the case in CONMEBOL (South America), Oceania and Asia (AFC).
If Salman had managed to persuade FIFA president Sepp Blatter and the majority of exco members to support his plan, it would almost certainly have been binding across all six confederations.
Since 2011 Asia’s FIFA vice-presidency has been held by Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan who won it in a democratic vote – just like Salman did for AFC president – and badly wants another four-year mandate.
But ever since then, Sheikh Salman is understood to have sought to get the two positions merged so he could hold them both.
His last remaining option now is to rally support within his own executive committee for a change in the AFC statutes though AFC sources say such a move is once again unlikely to succeed.
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