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The race for the FIFA Presidency is turning out to be as dull as those for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were fascinating.
The incumbent, Joseph Blatter, is thus far adopting the wholly predictable strategy of emphasising the value of continuity in an unstable world while detailing the torrents of cash that have rained down on planet football over his 13-year tenure – and critically, he says, will continue to do so.
This leaves the way wide open for a candidate for change.
This, though, is a role that the challenger, Mohamed Bin Hammam, would find it tough to play even if he wanted to.
The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) President has, after all, had a seat in FIFA’s inner sanctum, the Executive Committee (ExCo), for even longer than Blatter has been President.
If you don’t accept this analysis, then ask yourself in what ways you think the FIFA High Command would behave significantly differently under a Bin Hammam Presidency.
See what I mean?
Admittedly, Bin Hammam has proposed changes to FIFA’s top decision-making bodies, advocating ExCo’s expansion from 24 to 41 members and its relabelling as the FIFA Board.
He also wants to establish a FIFA Executive Office, bracketing the Presidents of world football’s six continental confederations with the FIFA President.
But this seems designed, at least in part, to win the backing of confederation presidents who, in my opinion, already wield quite enough influence over FIFA affairs.
I fail to see how it would make FIFA better run.
Where are the suggestions that could really make a difference?
A proposal, say, to sweep away the absurdly antiquated mechanism by which the laws of the game can be changed, which is making a laughing stock of football’s leaders for their failure to adopt new technology to determine if a goal has been scored.
Or to conduct an in-depth probe of FIFA’s corporate governance as part of a serious attempt to address the questions that seem permanently to hover over the way the governing body takes its decisions.
These, of course, resurfaced most dramatically in last year’s battle to win the right to stage the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
But as a citizen of Qatar, the tiny but immensely wealthy state that won the 2022 contest, it would be particularly difficult for Bin Hammam to question this process.
This, though, is not to say Bin Hammam cannot win.
Indeed, while constructing a more interesting election platform would win the Qatari many friends among those of us paid to observe and chronicle the contest, I doubt it would win him many actual votes.
Nine years ago, after all, African football leader Issa Hayatou waged an extremely interesting campaign to usurp Blatter’s crown.
But it was also a losing campaign.
As Bin Hammam looks to have realised, probably his best chance of springing an upset is to grab a share of the credit for the Goal development project, while persuading the national associations which will determine the winner that he can come up with even more resources than his veteran opponent if given the chance in the next four years.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that the blog currently in pride of place on his website – www.mohamedbinhammam.com – states: “I don’t think it is boastful of me to lay claim to turning the FIFA Goal Project into the huge success it has become since Mr Blatter gave me the task of chairing the Goal Bureau.”
Nor is it surprising that, as I write this, the Qatari’s latest publicity thrust focuses on future spending, specifically doubling to $500,000 (£302,000) the annual amount given by FIFA to each federation and raising the maximum per project under Goal from $400,000 (£242,000) to $1 million (£605,000).
Blatter wrote recently of providing “$1 billion (£605 million) for football development in the next four years”, while underlining how he “initiated and implemented the very successful Goal Programme”, along with a string of other initiatives.
Another month of this sort of stuff would constitute pretty thin gruel for us election-watchers.
But both men are probably adopting the most rational strategy for them – and neither will care a jot about boring the world if his tactics produce the right result.
And there, for me, is the rub.
The electorate in this election does not consist of the galumphing park players, like I used to be, who turn up week in, week out to play this great game, whatever the weather; nor the “XYZ ’til I die” club supporters, nor even the coaches and referees who devote hours of their time to the sport, often with precious little in return.
The electorate is the 208 national member associations.
I can only speak with confidence about England, but if the views of these associations in other countries are as out of kilter with those who actually practice the game as I strongly suspect they are here, then you can begin to see why this strikes me as a pretty pale version of democracy.
Yes it would be complex to allow anyone who can prove they are a card-carrying member of a football club, of any level, anywhere in the world, a direct say in the election of the FIFA President both by voting for and – crucially – nominating their preferred candidates.
But it would be a glorious experiment.
And – while it would be absurd to suggest that this most genuinely global of all sports is in any way at crisis-point – it may be necessary if football’s grandees are to be reconnected with its grass roots.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938