BANNED HAMMAM STILL INFLUENTIAL IN AFC ELECTION

Dubai, May 1: Expelled by Fifa for alleged corruption, Mohamed bin Hammam is barred from attending elections on Thursday to finally replace him as Asia’s top football official.

Still, the Qatari’s career is inevitably linked with all candidates seeking to succeed him as the Asian Football Confederation president and member of the Fifa executive committee.

“I know maybe four of us are calling him and he is receiving calls from everyone,” presidential candidate Hafez Al Medlej of Saudi Arabia said. “He is an icon of football.”

Bin Hammam has said little since Fifa initially suspended him in May 2011, and less since Fifa imposed a life ban last December during investigations into his alleged mismanagement of AFC contracts and bank accounts.

“It looks to me a bit late,” he wrote April 7 on Twitter to a writer seeking an interview. “I don’t want to disturb my family life anymore.”

A request for an interview through Bin Hammam’s lawyer in the United States was also declined.

Yet bin Hammam, as Asia’s elected football leader since 2002 and a key factor inside Fifa during Qatar’s stunning successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup, is connected to those with ambition to follow him.

Exactly four years ago, bin Hammam edged Bahrain’s Sheik Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa to retain the Fifa board seat he held since 1996. Defeat could have left Qatar lacking the leverage needed to help win the World Cup vote 19 months later. — AP