Bahrain’s Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa gained a major boost in his bid to become the next Fifa president when he received endorsement from the Confederation of African Football (CAF) on Friday.
CAF second vice-president Almamy Kabele Camara said the decision to support the 50-year-old Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president had been reached “unanimously” at the meeting during the African Nations Championship tournament in Kigali.
The 54 African votes are considered crucial in order to get a majority of votes from the 209 member federations at the February 27 ballot in Zurich at an extraordinary FIFA congress.
Although CAF executives declared their support for Sheikh Salman, there is nothing compelling African countries to vote for him.
The decision was taken at a CAF meeting in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, where the organisation listened to presentations given by Shaikh Salman and fellow candidates Gianni Infantino, UEFA’s general secretary, Frenchman Jérôme Champagne and South African businessman Tokyo Sexwale.
Fellow candidate Infantino had emerged as a potential challenger to the Shaikh with a stream of recent backings from various countries, as well as the South American Football Confederation.
“But certainly in the race I remain”.
Sexwale, an apartheid-era political prisoner who was jailed alongside Nelson Mandela, recognised that possibility when he said in a radio interview last week that he would like to see FIFA’s next president be “an African or an Asian”. “And we continue to support him and believe this is a worthy candidate and we back his candidacy”.
TOKYO Sexwale was asked to withdraw from the Fifa presidential race when he faced the South African Football Association’s (Safa’s) emergency committee at OR Tambo International Airport on Tuesday.
CAF’s move was bound to bring more scrutiny on a co-operation agreement signed last month between the AFC and CAF. Prince Ali of Jordan is expected to arrive later Friday. “I go to speak with them individually and the executive committee of CAF even said that it is free of course to go with who they want”, he said.
