Tokyo loses continent’s support in Fifa race

TOKYO Sexwale faces an ignominious exit from the Fifa presidential election in the coming days after it emerged yesterday that he will be told in no uncertain terms to withdraw from the race on Tuesday.

The South African Football Association (Safa) will meet Sexwale this week after several African countries told the SA sports body that “his blatant disregard for advice and football protocols” won him no friends on the continent.

Even some of the countries that initially warmed up to his bid for the most powerful position in world football have asked Safa to pull the plug on his campaign or run the risk of embarrassing SA when the Confederation of African Football (Caf) meets in Kigali, Rwanda, on February 5 to decide on which candidate to support in the Fifa presidency race.

“We will tell him to withdraw when we meet on Tuesday and if he doesn’t agree or refuses to do it, he will go to Kigali without our support,” a Safa executive committee member said. “We will make our position very clear.”

“We have been told that he (Sexwale) is not taking the African continent seriously and just about everybody on the continent says he must with- DISAPPOINTING: African football leaders are displeased with Tokyo Sexwale draw from race.”

Namibia Football Association president Frans Vatileni Mbidi did not mince his words and he told Sunday Times that he was “very disappointed” with Sexwale after his campaign rubbed him up the wrong way.

An upset Mbidi said Sexwale made no attempt to meet him personally when he attended the Cosafa congress in Johannesburg last month while the other Fifa presidential hopefuls — Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, Gianni Infantino and Jerome Champagne — ensured they got an audience with the Namibian when he was in SA.

“We have been waiting for Mr Tokyo Sexwale to contact us and until now he (has not contacted) us,” Mbidi said.

“We are in the dark and we do not know as neighbours what his strategies are. We have not heard from him except when we

this presidential met at the Cosafa congress. It is now up to Safa to contact us and tell us the developments. Maybe they do not need our vote. But they have been very quiet.

“As neighbours, we need to sit down and talk and agree on what we should be doing. But as things stand we are actually in the dark. I was also expecting Mr Sexwale to contact me personally as a candidate because our relationship should not have a middle man. It should be a direct relationship.”

An equally unimpressed Zimbabwe Football Association boss Phillip Chiyengwa said Sexwale promised to visit Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe and they are still waiting

He is not taking the African continent seriously SA and their candidate are not doing good enough

for the former Gauteng premier to show up in Harare.

“South Africa and their candidate are not doing good enough to enlist our support,” Chiyengwa said.

Another Safa executive committee member said Sexwale was taken through his paces in the initial stages of his campaign and the soccer boss novice was given a crash course on how to woo potential voters on the campaign trail. But he “only did 10% of the things he was told and threw the guidelines out the window”.

Sexwale’s spokesman Peter Paul Ngwenya did not answer his mobile after initially saying he would answer questions.