Crisis talks crucial to stave off takeover
AN 11th-hour bid will be made to avoid an FIFA takeover of Australian football early today after hours of talks to find a compromise solution to the game’s civil war.
All the stakeholders in the battle for control of the game will come together at Football Federation Australia’s headquarters, for what insiders described as the first mass attempt to secure a deal over the voting structure of FFA’s Congress.
After a delegation from FIFA – sent to seek a compromise – met all parties at length yesterday, private talks between the A-League clubs and heads of the state federations were due to continue late into the evening.
FIFA has warned that if agreement can’t be reached, it will effectively sack the FFA board and appoint a so-called “normalisation committee” to take over in the interim.
Two years after FIFA first warned FFA it needed to widen the voting structure of its membership, hopes of an agreed outcome were set to go down to the wire, with the three-man delegation from FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation due to leave Australia late today.
So far, FFA chairman Steven Lowy’s proposed reform – with the state federations keeping nine votes, the clubs getting an increase from one to three and the players’ union getting one vote for the first time – has been rejected by FIFA as not representative enough of the game.
The clubs have pressed hard for up to six votes, arguing they provide the bulk of the game’s income and need a far greater say in its running. It’s believed the outlines of a draft agreement were being discussed by the clubs and the federations in the hope a compromise could be presented to FIFA today.