By Andrew Warshaw at Soccerex in Manchester
September 8 – Prince Ali bin al-Hussein is poised to announce tomorrow that he is standing for FIFA president for the second time in a matter of months. Sucker for punishment? He clearly doesn’t think so.
One might have thought that after being bruised by the manner of his defeat to Sepp Blatter in May that the former FIFA vice-president would have stuck by his previous intention to walk away from football’s world governing body and leave the battle ground vacated by Blatter to the likes of Michel Platini, Chung Mong-joon and a number of less known candidates who are already seen as also-rans.
Prince Ali sees himself, however, as a man of genuine principle and clearly wants to be seen as the white night. It’s not whether you play the game but how you play it appears to be his thinking.
Prince Ali, still head of the Jordanian Football Association though no longer a member of FIFA’s executive committee, denied Blatter an outright first-round victory at the last election in May. Four days into his fifth term, Blatter announced his intention to step down much, presumably, to Prince Ali’s frustration.
Prospective candidates have until October 26 to come up with five written nominations and Prince Ali, quizzed yesterday at the Soccerex forum in Manchester about his intentions, is understood to be announcing his candidacy back home in Jordan before returning 24 hours later to the UK for his first post-declaration public function in London where he is due to give a speech on governance.
Yet for the second time in a row, the Jordanian prince is set to be alienated by his own Asian confederation whose president, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, is a declared supporter of Platini.
“We have to take the locks off the doors and open the windows,” said Prince Ali. “There is no need for secrecy. People want to know what we are, who we are, how the money is spent, how much are paid and that is transparency and openness. It’s OK to ask for truly independent outside bodies to help us out in reforming the organisation and if we do that correctly we will get our sponsors much more excited.
“Sponsors are hesitant about FIFA and that’s a real shame. They should be fighting to be a part of football, a part of FIFA, because what they provide for us should go back into developing the sport across the world.”
One area of particular intrigue is why Prince Ali, the bulk of whose 73 votes last time came from UEFA, has fallen out so spectacularly with Platini.
It is understood that Platini’s attempt to woo other confederation chiefs rather than individual national associations – anathema to Prince Ali’s philosophy – is at the heart of the breakdown.
This is allied to talks between the pair in France in mid-July when Prince Ali took the view that Platini actually had no forward-looking vision for FIFA.
Not that their relationship was ever as solid as either would have us believe. It is speculated that Prince Ali had to persuade the UEFA membership not to boycott the last election in May after the idea had apparently been floated by Platini.
If and when he does declare, Prince Ali is unlikely to have the support of the outgoing Blatter, especially after some choice comments he made here Monday. Ridiculing Blatter’s denials of responsibility for the various scandals to engulf FIFA, Prince Ali remarked: “Anything that happened within FIFA was known about by the leadership of FIFA. There is no way that was not the case.”
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