By Andrew Warshaw
February 23 – Danny Jordaan, the man who did more than anyone to bring the World Cup to South Africa, today failed in his great ambition to win a seat on to the top table at FIFA.
Jordaan, the chief executive of South Africa’s 2010 World Cup Organising Committee, was hoping to secure one of two available African places on FIFA’s 24-man Executive committee, but was beaten out of sight in what appeared to be a deliberate political snub.
At the Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) congress in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, Jordaan came a distant fourth out of five candidates, with Mohamed Raouraoua of Algeria winning election to the Committee with 39 votes and Jacques Anouma of Ivory Coast gaining 35 to retain his seat for a second four-year term.
Raouraoua will replace the disgraced Amos Adamu of Nigeria, banned from all soccer-related activity for three years after allegedly offering to sell his vote in the recent 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding campaigns, and will formally join FIFA’s top brass on June 1 at its congress in Zurich when Sepp Blatter stands for re-election as its President.
Jordaan, who knows what it is like to lose after South Africa were edged out by Germany for the right to host the 2006 World Cup, will be devastated to have received a mere 10 votes from the 53 national members who make up CAF.
He had been seeking to follow the likes of France’s Michel Platini and Germany’s Franz Beckenbauer, both of whom have organised World Cups in their respective countries, onto the ruling panel of world football.
Jordaan gained universal respect for the way he tirelessly fought against public opinion and made sure South Africa staged a successful, and for the most part crime-free, World Cup last summer.
“Everyone in Africa has been praising us for the successful hosting of the World Cup and so in the tradition of Platini and Beckenbauer, it is logical we seek to bring that experience to the FIFA committee,” Jordaan said in an interview prior to the vote in Khartoum.
He had staked his case on a bid to have every African region represented on FIFA’s Executive Committee but his problem was that he wanted to be fast-tracked straight onto world football’s ruling body without rising through the ranks of his confederation as Raouraoua and Anouma had done.
He ended up polling even fewer votes than the 12 given to Suketu Patel of Seychelles, another member of the CAF executive committee.
A fifth candidate, Ibrahim Galadima of Nigeria, tried to follow in Adamu’s footsteps and keep his country at the forefront of FIFA politics, but came last with five votes.
Zambian Kalusha Bwalya withdrew from the race.
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