By Paul Nicholson in Manama, Bahrain
November 17 – In the second instalment of his exclusive interview with Insideworldfootball, Asian Football Confederation president and FIFA presidential candidate Shaikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa talks about a much needed new structure for crisis-torn FIFA, his position on reform, and the steps towards stability his own Asian confederation have taken in the past two years.
If you ask Shaikh Salman about what his administration would look like if he was FIFA president and how he would reverse the crisis that seems to only deepen on a daily basis, he responds with a question of his own. “What concerns you most? Is it transparency? To know exactly what comes in or what comes out?”
That’s perhaps an even bigger question than the one he was asked and he knows it. How about the ability to trust the person in charge because it seems we can’t trust all of those who have lead the organisation to date?
“Of course I think we need somebody there who people can trust, who can play very cleanly and openly. I want to go in and show the rest of the world I can do the job in a proper way. In a way of openness and show people that they are welcome to come in and check everything out,” says Salman.
But what would this organisation look like? Salman is funding his own campaign and says that he would not take a salary if he took the presidency at FIFA. His vision for FIFA is more along the lines of a modern day corporate structure “with a management board that would be full time working with a non-executive board – then everyone is accountable to everyone.”
“If I am non-executive I won’t take a salary. I see that (the new FIFA presidency) as a non-exec role. I think it is better to have proper management and executive to run FIFA.”
Salman’s point is that FIFA is too big to be the fiefdom of one person. FIFA might have been able to grow up that way but it has reached the stage where it has outgrown its old structure.
“We have to treat FIFA as a corporate entity because with all the revenue and the work that has to be done there is really no other way,” said Salman.
“We have to bring in the proper team to handle the day to day. Choosing the CEO is the first and most important decision of any president coming in and we have to choose somebody who people respect and trust. We have seen this in other organsiations like the Premier League, Bundesliga, and UEFA where they are handling their revenues in a very clear way. I don’t think it is difficult for us to find a person who can handle the job.”
That person would not necessarily come from within the football family. “We have to keep all the options open and as long as we feel that they are the right person then this is all that matters.”
So this would seem to rule out any automatic role for his presidential rivals in his administration – in particular Gianni Infantino or Jerome Champagne who have been mooted as possible candidates.
“At the end of the day you have to bring in someone who has some knowledge of football even if they are from outside of today’s football administration, but they must at least know about football because they will handle football matters day to day. A top manager can deal with any industry. That’s what we need, that’s what FIFA needs.
“But again you have a lot of the stakeholders around talking about the profession – leagues, fifpro, referees all these fans etc, you have to give them a role to have a say on how things should be run and done. And they must be listened to.”
Do you feel they have been sufficiently involved up to this point? “I don’t think they have been, not to the capacity that I would like to see. The clubs when you look at them they have a big input into the game and its finances etc. They must have a say, they have to get involved actively.”
Giving an increased role to clubs might not be in the interests of all national federations and can lead to conflicts. “There must be a balance,” said Salman, “and we have to keep a good balance between every body because at the end everyone will need each other. The leagues need the clubs and the clubs need the national association to support each other. Yes there are some differences in certain countries but I think there have to be concessions made and compromise.”
Finding the right balance of reform
If balancing FIFA’s multiple stakeholders is a tough task, what about the balance between the various reform proposals (Carrard or Scala?) that Salman agrees FIFA desperately needs.
“I think reforms can come from everywhere, not just from Scala or Carrard…we have to show the world that we are serious about reforms, whether we are talking about age or term limits, or exco representation or quite simply good governance.”
Age and term limits appear to be the most basic and the least of Salman’s reform concerns. “At the AFC we have an age limit and a term limit – 3 terms and 72 years old I think (he is vaguer on age limit because at 49 he has a long way to go before he reaches that).
“Women’s participation is important. I think we are probably the only confederation that has five women in our ExCo. In every zone there have to be woman representatives.”
Deeper reform proposals like reducing the influence of confederations and the individuals they send to FIFA gets a more considered response. “I think now it’s been much stricter than before. People have to watch what they are doing and this is really due to the reforms that have been introduced in the past two, three years and the ethics committee has been driving this…We are putting a lot of policies into force to prevent this (corruption) happening again and we will continue to do that and make it stricter and hopefully do as much as we can to make FIFA as clean as possible.
“But with over a billion participants involved in football you can’t simply assume that all of them are clean. There is always a bad apple here and there. But I think if the intentions and the rules are to protect the organisation we will all be satisfied and successful. This is very important and if they (the rules) need to be strengthened then we are there to give it our full support as well.”
Can you be president of the AFC and FIFA at the same time?
“If I am president of FIFA I don’t think that I can but I am sure that we will have the AFC in good hands as well, but this is for them to decide. If I become a FIFA president it is the decision of the AFC congress to take as to who they would like to be their leader.”
Salman became AFC president in 2013, elected on a unification platform for the confederation. How far has this been achieved in the two years since his election? “There is a good understanding (within the AFC) and I think one can feel it as well. You can ask around and see. I remember one of the FIFA officials came to our last awards night in Manilla, and said ‘for the first time I have visited this confederation I feel that people are happy’. This is the feeling that he got, not my words, but this is the sense I get when I talk to people. We are 47 nations, and may be not all the 47 are happy but I think that if, say, 40 of them are happy about how things are run, then that is a positive sign.”
Salman compares where the AFC was in 2011 to where it is in 2015. His priority has been to bring stability to the region.
“It was very important to bring that solidarity in Asia together,” he says. “When we look at the competitions and the funding of projects we have started a number of initiatives. We try to establish new programmes for developing nations by listening to the needs of all our members in Asia.
“We will probably change the format of World Cup qualifiers and Asian Cup qualifiers, we will increase the numbers from 16 to 24 for the next Asian Cup 2019.
“We have looked at how to support the countries that are playing for the first time in their history in the World Cup qualifiers – this was an experience for them. It is not just about the result but how do you progress and how do you develop your team unless you participate – we support them in this, it is very important. It was a journey but it was an experience for everyone to get the feeling to be part of Asia. What we have achieved is to have a good understanding amongst ourselves, this is very important, and to create that stability I think is the main factor.”
At the centre of these efforts is the need for substantial finance from the commercial sector where the AFC has been locked into a long term agency deal with World Sport Group, signed before Salman’s presidency began. Rumours amongst agencies were that he was looking to change this deal, but the rumours may have been jumping the gun.
“When I came in 2013 the agreement had already been signed already in 2002 and the contract was signed for a further two cycles from 2012 to 2020. Yes, we have been through difficult times but I think we have managed it in a very proper way to have the Champions League and Asia Cup etc, and we try to find the extra resources from here and there but the present agreement is an agreement we have to respect contractually.
“A lot of people are talking about the extension, we have talked to several top agencies to see the value and I think this is the right of any official to see what is the best way – nobody can say we have just talked to just one individual, we have talked to four or five leading agencies to look at the future plans but nothing has been agreed as yet – and there is no hurry,” he said.
Salman points to the growth in Asia that is already showing fruit particularly with the re-emergence of China and its football ambition. The AFC has just a signed a new broadcast deal in China which is almost 10 times larger than its previous agreement.
“The Asian market is emerging and China is coming in very hard. We have always said that India and China are sleeping giants but I think one of them has woken up and we are waiting for the other one now.
“It is important to have China as strong in football as in other sports. In the Olympics we all know China and where they stand and hopefully I don’t think it is difficult for China to step up its game and be competitive. In the Champions League Guangzhou Evergrande is in the final for the second time. We are looking forward to the final on the 21st – this is something that has to be credited to the Chinese FA and football there.”
And what about the role of the US Justice authorities in this new FIFA?
Salman was staying in the Baur au Lac Hotel in Zurich on the day the Swiss federal police swooped on the seven FIFA officials in concert with the US Department of Justice. Like everyone else he had no warning of the arrests and was similarly surprised.
“Lets talk about facts. Things have happened in America and people should have been arrested in America. Why in Zurich and just three days before the FIFA election? I don’t see this matter has anything to do with FIFA, it is a confederation issue and remember that the confederations are not members of FIFA,” he says.
Even so Salman recognises that this impacts on FIFA and people expect FIFA to do something.
His feeling is that there are measures that can be taken to keep confederations clean, but it isn’t simple. “It’s like asking the confederation to look into all of their FAs and their agreements as well. It’s difficult. They are a different body and have their own autonomy. There have to be safeguards and we are willing to look at how we can protect the game, how we can protect FIFA as well in the future. But this has to come up with the auditors, with compliance, corporate governance and more, to see what the safeguards that can be taken are. It is a work in progress but it has to be a realistic approach way as well.”
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