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I need your help: Asian football chief targets top FIFA job

Jazzie

Sheer joy at beating the scum :)
This is an interesting piece by Michael Cockerill in today's SMH. I hope Elias Figueroa gets a backer, we deserve something better than that is on offer. Story below.

I need your help: Asian football chief targets top FIFA job
By Michael Cockerill

The bitter, humiliating failure of Australia's World Cup bid cut Frank Lowy deeply. Maybe he'll never get over it. Publicly, he's kept a stiff upper lip in the three months since the evisceration in Zurich. Privately, he's run the full gamut of emotions – including cold anger at those he will always believe plotted against him. Does Mohammed Bin Hammam, the machiavellian president of the Asian Football Confederation, fall into that category? As a Qatari, Bin Hammam had every right to do everything he could to help his own country win the contest. But you sense the fact that Australia didn't get a single Asian vote will forever stick in Lowy's craw.

What's done is done. But it's what's done next which now becomes more than interesting. Bin Hammam has announced he's going after the most powerful job in the world game, the presidency of FIFA. What's more, he told SBS last week, he's "counting" on Australia's support when he faces Sepp Blatter at the end of May.

"I enjoy a very good relationship with Frank Lowy and the entire football family in Australia," he said. "I am counting not only on the Australian vote, but also on the goodwill and support Australia enjoys with other members. I regard Australia joining the AFC as a big achievement on my part."

Is that rubbing Lowy's face in it? If it is, Lowy could be excused for biting back. He's not, at least not yet. We know this, because just recently Lowy was presented with the perfect chance to take his revenge. The world had assumed the battle for the FIFA presidency would be a two-horse race. But a third horse has potentially emerged - a horse in need of a backer. Lowy was asked to be that backer, and it must have been sorely tempting. But after a period of contemplation he's knocked it back.

The third candidate is Elias Figueroa, warmly remembered as one of the finest defenders the game has ever seen, three times voted South America Footballer of the Year, and so good that he was named by FIFA as one of the 100 best players of the 20th century.

That's an impressive resume, but Figueroa has not emerged as a candidate simply because he was a great player - although it helps. Since retiring, he's been a journalist, the major of his home city (Vina del Mar) and been involved in the UN's Sport for Development and Peace program. In other words, he's a role model in every sense of the world. And, more importantly, he's regarded as a 'cleanskin'.

Lowy wasn't the only person disillusioned by how the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were awarded. The governance, transparency and honesty of FIFA came under sustained attack in the wake of last December's vote. That's nothing new for an organisation whose ethics have been under fire for years, but there's a feeling that this time FIFA's shady deal-making had gone too far. That feeling has manifested itself in the "Change FIFA" lobby group - a social media movement based out of the US and England aiming to bring the world body to account.

'Change FIFA' reckons Blatter has to go, but who can replace him? Not Bin Hammam, whom they believe is part of the problem, but someone new, someone credible, and someone untainted by the grubby world of FIFA politics. The man they have identified is Figueroa, who is willing to accept the challenge but now needs a federation to nominate him before Friday's deadline.

It was hoped Australia would be that federation because like the US and England - where "Change FIFA' has originated - this country had reasons to feel aggrieved about missing out on hosting the World Cup. Former FFA staffer Bonita Mersiades - a long-time confidante of Lowy - was asked to approach the FFA chairman a week ago with a simple message: "FIFA is one of the most important sporting organisations in the world and its key stakeholders - players and fans - deserve better than what appears to many to be opaque decision-making...." she said. "Nominating a candidate running on a genuine change platform would have said to the international football world that Australia is interested in reforming FIFA."

In the end, Lowy said no. Expediency? Probably. Australia will back Bin Hammam, perhaps through gritted teeth, because the realpolitik is about making inroads in Asia. Will Figueroa find another backer in time? Hopefully. Everyone knows FIFA needs a makeover. Even, you suspect, Lowy.

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midfielder

Well-Known Member
The guy has no hide .... my uncle Leo had a saying that applies here.... if I shook hand with em I count my fingers afterwards...
 

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