Dyke: Please don’t vote for a Blatter clone
Fa chairman greg Dyke called for an end to the cult of Blatter on the eve of the FIFA presidential election with Sheik Salman bin ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain, the 8/15 odds- on favourite in a moderate field to succeed him.
But Dyke has so little faith in the 207- strong FIFA Congress voting today he would have expected old rogue Sepp Blatter to still triumph if he hadn’t been banned from football for six years. and he doesn’t want the ‘cult of someone else’ taking his place.
Dyke thinks that someone will be UEFA general secretary gianni Infantino although he has much ground still to make up on Salman. The bookmakers, who rate Infantino 6-4 second favourite, have probably got it right for the first time in this campaign. The other three, Prince ali bin al-Hussein (8-1), Tokyo Sexwale (25-1) and Jerome Champagne (66-1), are merely making up the numbers.
Dyke said: ‘If Mr Blatter was standing this time, he might well win. a lot of people don’t get it from different parts of the world. That’s what made FIFA like north Korea where one after the other stood up and said what a wonderful man he was — “We want Mr Blatter, he must live forever” — and the rest of it.
‘That was pretty depressing. But the cult of Blatter is no more and what we’ve got to make sure is the cult of someone else doesn’t replace him. You can’t have someone again like Blatter who goes around the world with the largesse.’
The bookies’ unusual lack of knowledge — they had Prince ali as a strong favourite for most of the campaign — sums up the football public’s lethargy over the election, most of it FIFA fatigue after the corruption scandal that has brought world football’s ruling body to the brink.
Indeed, wholesale FIFA reforms to be voted on before the presidential ballot are more important for the future of football than whoever takes the helm in Zurich.
Infantino has had the momentum over the last fortnight and touring Robben island with former political prisoner Sexwale at the start of the week was good PR. But bizarre claims that Infantino had secured half the africa vote were fanciful.
Blanket support in europe will bring Infantino around 75 votes in the first round — enough to take the Sheik into a second ballot where he’s predicted to gain the straight majority needed.
However, the Sheik is uninspiring both as a personality and speaker. In presentations to the CONCACAF and UEFA Congresses he gave the impression of being a safe pair of hands if nothing else.
The human rights abuses to Bahrain footballers, even if Salman wasn’t involved, don’t seem to have registered outside europe. a straw poll of CONCACAF delegates discovered they knew nothing about the issue. But the allegations have been enough for Dyke not to back him.
The FIFA reforms are planned to end the FIFA committee culture but Salman was nevertheless promising the same sort of ‘participation’ to CONCACAF delegates whom he told: ‘I hope we can bring asia’s stability to the rest of the world. But I am not ready to mortgage football’s future to win an election. We need to concentrate in the countries that need most.’
That was a dig at rival Infantino who has pledged to give every national association $5million (£3.57m) over four years.
Infantino said: ‘We can do it easily by looking at the cost structure of FIFA. Something is wrong if it can’t be found.’
But the most memorable contribution from the hustings came from Sexwale. He called Captain Horace Burrell, the CONCACAF vice-president chairing their Congress — ‘Captain, My Captain’ — referencing Dead Poets Society and said fixing football wasn’t rocket science adding: ‘I know rockets, I fire them.’
If Mr Blatter was standing this time, he might well win