By Paul Nicholson
January 25 – The president of the Bermuda FA and chair of FIFA’s appeals committee, Larry Mussenden, has announced that he will run for the vacant CONCACAF presidency. The president will be elected at a congress in May.
CONCACAF is currently operating without a president with its executive committee having decided that with its last three presidents indicted by US justice authorities, it need to work through its own reform programmes before electing a new leader.
Mussenden is the second candidate to declare his election intention, following on from Guyanese Mark Rodriguez. Further nominees are expected. The CONCACAF executive committee are rumoured to be backing Canadian Vitcor Montagliani, while Caribbean Football Union (CFU) president Gordon Derrick has yet to declare his intentions.
In a letter to federations Mussenden says: ” We will very soon have a unique opportunity to chart a brand new course for our confederation and the continued development of the beautiful game in our individual territories and the region as a whole. While we must learn the lessons from our past, we cannot dwell on it as we chart a course for the future based on transparent principled governance, real accountability and financial probity. Recent events suggest that achieving this outcome requires firm, decisive and principled leadership.”
A lawyer by trade, Mussended is a former Senator, Attorney-General and
Minister of Justice of Bermuda. In his letter he says he was “called to the English and Bermuda bar some twenty years ago, I believe I possess the training and legal experience required to ensure that any result of our necessary reform process properly reflects our collective will and is comprehensively manifested in our written rules and statutes.”
Mussenden also understands the corridors of FIFA being a former member of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee and having served as chairman of the FIFA Appeals Committee since 2007.
He praises CONCACAF federations for their diversity in his letter, saying that “despite the hurt we naturally feel based on the recent past, we must continue to remind ourselves that CONCACAF was once and still remains a great organization with the best ideals.”
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1734898028labto1734898028ofdlr1734898028owedi1734898028sni@n1734898028osloh1734898028cin.l1734898028uap1734898028