August 9 – Issa Hayatou, one of the most influential figures in the world of football politics and known as the Godfather of African football after reigning for 29 years, has died aged 77 whilst attending the Paris Olympics.
The long-time head of the Confederation of African Football was for a while also interim president of FIFA during the corruption crisis in 2015 that engulfed the organisation.
Hayatou lost his iron grip on the CAF presidency in 2017 when he was dethroned by the then little-known Ahmad Ahmad who was later banned for corruption and plunged into disgrace.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who backed Ahmad to take over from Hayatou, said in an Instagram post he was “saddened” to hear of Hayatou’s passing.
“On behalf of FIFA, condolences go to his family, friends, former colleagues and all who knew him. Rest in peace,” added Infantino.
Hayatou, from Cameroon, was elected CAF boss in 1988 and within four years was a FIFA vice-president.
Despite often accused of being dictatorial, under his tenure he helped increase the number of places for African nations in the World Cup and in 2002, during a period of deep financial and political turmoil at FIFA, challenged then-president Sepp Blatter in an election.
He lost heavily but 13 years later, after Blatter was forced to resign in the wake of the FifaGate scandal that snared a raft of big names, Hayatou took over as interim president and steered FIFA toward anti-corruption reforms.
He voted against Infantino in the 2016 FIFA presidential election but his influence effectively ended when he lost the CAF leadership to Ahmad a year later and faced an investigation by FIFA’s ethics committee with most observers viewing the FIFA executive’s motivation for that probe as ensuring that Hayatou, still immensely popular within Africa, did not return.
In 2021 he was given a one-year ban for alleged breach of “duty of loyalty” when signing African football’s largest ever deal with French media company Lagardere. The sanction was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in February the following year though by then Hayatou had distanced himself from the corridors of power.
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