I was interested to read Laila Mintas’s recent column on voting reform at FIFA. But while I can see much logic in the position she stakes out, and can certainly appreciate the democratic anomaly of China (population 1.3 billion) having the same voting power as American Samoa and Andorra (populations each less than 100,000), it seems to me there are more important matters to focus on before the introduction of Mintas’s Point-Voting-System can have any bearing on the calibre of governance in world football.
Priority Numero Uno for me must be to take back a good dose of the power that the Presidents of world football’s six continental Confederations have grabbed for themselves in recent times. Indeed, I would argue that one of the reasons FIFA has so many micro-states among its 209 member associations is that strong confederation bosses have realised that every new rock, islet and promontory on their patch whose football association is recognised by the world governing body represents potentially another vote under their control.
The power grab by Confederation leaders with the personal authority to make block-votes stick is particularly outrageous since, as ex-FIFA official Jérôme Champagne has pointed out, Confederations are not members of FIFA. They do, however, control the continent-wide competitions that national associations and their leading clubs participate in between World Cups. And, since some of these competitions are annual, you could argue that they are, or are set to become, more dependable business propositions than FIFA. I would already take UEFA’s business model over FIFA’s, and you might be able to say the same of at least two other Confederations within 20 years.
Confederations tend to enjoy varied success when trying, like whips in a party political democracy, to encourage continent-wide block-votes at FIFA Congresses. UEFA President Michel Platini, for example, was unable to deliver 53 European votes to Prince Ali in the recent FIFA Presidential vote. Where their influence is much more substantial – and, I would argue, harmful – is within the ranks of FIFA’s Executive Committee.
I sometimes think of the FIFA President as Gulliver tied down by the tiny ligatures of the Lilliputians, not deprived of the power to move, in this case, but to implement any elements of his electoral programme that his committee colleagues disagree with. Once again, Champagne tells it, for me, pretty much like it is:
“In every democracy, the electoral process has the purpose of appointing an elected person on a platform with the responsibility to implement it, and with the obligation to be regularly held accountable to the voters,” he writes.
“In democratic systems, the elected person has the power to choose the government who will help the implementation of the platform s/he has been elected for. This is not the case in FIFA!
“Executive Committee members have been elected through different entities and various political cycles. Rather than a football government, the Executive Committee became a kind of “Confederations’ Council”, where majorities are moulded, not to implement the programme the President has been elected for, but by combining blocks of votes within which continental officials’ legitimacy opposes the President’s world legitimacy, trying to control the latter and/or to limit it.
“In fact, the associations elect a President without giving him/her the means [to implement] the policy s/he has been elected for.”
It must be, at times, like asking a Prime Minister to govern with a Cabinet drawn from the Opposition parties.
Small wonder that governance has become so dysfunctional when the main decision-making body is designed, in part, to hold the President in check.
What then do François Carrard and his fellow members of the 2016 FIFA Reform Committee – most of whom have been appointed, I note, by one Confederation or another – need to change?
I would argue that a remodelled Executive Committee – specifically differentiating between national association and Confederation members, and embracing representatives of other stakeholders, such as players, youth academies, referees, broadcasters and so on – would be a big improvement.
National associations, as FIFA’s legitimate members – and the electorate – should have 50% of the seats. In that way if, and only if, there were a clean split between national associations and all other stakeholders on a given issue, the President would have the casting vote.
The Confederations are important enough inhabitants of Planet Football to warrant a couple of seats – but the task of these representatives should be to argue for changes that are of common interest to all confederations, not to reduce the committee to a patchwork of regional pressure groups.
Commercial interests such as sponsors should also be represented. Indeed, it could be argued that a sponsor whose sole interest in football stemmed from a World Cup sponsorship has an incentive to argue that competition’s corner more effectively than anyone, since other stakeholders, be they players or associations, would also have other fish to fry.
All well and good, you might say, but why on earth would the Confederations – whose hold over FIFA only seems to be increasing at the moment – agree? Quite so. There may, however, be one small chink of light.
Much can change between now and February, but it is, I think, fair to say, that if the vote to replace Sepp Blatter as FIFA President were tomorrow, the vast majority of people would expect UEFA’s Platini to win.
That means that the Confederations may be about to turn from the source of most of the Frenchman’s power to one of his main bugbears. If he realises this, and if he is confident of victory, wouldn’t the smart move be to do what he can to make sure that their wings get clipped under the present reform process before he assumes the hot seat? That would appear to be both in his own interests and for the good of the game.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.