Deserving to head FIFA

FIFA has been rocked by the arrests of several of its high-profile officials over the past few days by US and Swiss authorities, just before the slated elections for a new leadership for the world football association, set for today.

Even though the incumbent FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, is not among the officials arrested, his leadership of FIFA remains tarnished for allowing widespread corruption to take place under his very nose.

With so many high officials arrested for graft, kickbacks and other financial crimes, the entire governing structure of FIFA is due for change.

That is why the candidacy of HRH Prince Ali becomes all the more urgent.

Prince Ali is running against Blatter who has been president of FIFA since 1999. Even without the taint attached by the very recent arrests, the leadership needs to change. New blood is needed to bring the association into the 21st century.

Prince Ali, who is the president of the Jordan Football Association and the West Asian Football Federation, is running on a ticket that calls for a complete overhaul and clean-up of FIFA and the restoration of transparency, good governance and, above all, accountability to the association.

As one commentator put it, Prince Ali is against the one-man show approach that characterised Blatter’s long term in office.

The prince wants strategic decisions to be taken collectively and in a transparent way.

“I want to make FIFA a first-class organisation that is worthy of a sport that unites billions of people around the globe and rightly declared the world’s game,” said the prince.

After the withdrawal of the Dutch candidate Michael van Praag and of the Portuguese candidate Luis Figo, the stage is set for Prince Ali to win today’s elections because of the need to seriously clean-up the famous football association.