GENEVA // The Sepp Blatter era at Fifa is set to finally end Friday when football’s scandal-scarred world body picks a new president after nine months of crisis. An election meeting designed to give Fifa a fresh start with a new leader could yet be overshadowed by its criminally corrupt past.
Voters return to Zurich this week unsure who is the next target of federal law enforcement agencies in the United States and Switzerland, who have sent Fifa into meltdown with waves of arrests, extraditions and guilty pleas.
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Swiss prosecutors could decide this week is best to meet key witnesses in their widening case. Many football officials are making possibly their last working trip to Switzerland until May 2019, when the next scheduled Fifa election should be held in Zurich.
At the last election in May, Blatter won a fifth presidential term two days after Fifa’s favoured five-star hotel in Zurich and its own headquarters were raided. The pressure of criminal investigations soon forced Blatter from his beloved Fifa in his 41st year on the payroll.
Now, leaders of Fifa’s 209-member federations visit the tiny Swiss city again to elect a successor for the now-banned Blatter who has been president since 1998. The winner will be just the fourth elected Fifa chief in more than 50 years.
Two front-runners have emerged in a five-candidate contest: Asia’s football leader, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain, and Gianni Infantino, the Swiss general secretary of European governing body Uefa.
The other candidates are: Former Fifa vice president Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan, who lost to Blatter in May; former Fifa official Jerome Champagne of France; and South African businessman Tokyo Sexwale, once an inmate of Robben Island prison with Nelson Mandela.
Infantino acknowledged that police could hit Fifa for the fourth time in nine months.
“They know what is best for their work to be done in the most efficient way,” Infantino told the Associated Press in a recent interview. “If I’m elected president of Fifa, what they can count on not 100 but 200 per cent with me to clean and to put anyone in jail who has done anything bad for football.”
The three previous strikes — arresting seven men, including two Fifa vice presidents, on May 27; interrogating Blatter, 79, and former protege Michel Platini on September 25; arresting two more Fifa vice presidents on December 3 — were on days that Fifa’s discredited executive committee met. It meets again Wednesday.
Sheikh Salman suggests government agencies have tried to influence Fifa politics. That view is shared by Blatter and Russian president Vladimir Putin, who claimed the US wants the 2018 World Cup taken from his country.
“Choosing the time and place during an election or a meeting,” Sheikh Salman told the AP this month of previous police raids, “I think this raises a lot of doubts on why, and leave people a bit suspicious on the intentions.” The Bahraini royal was “absolutely” sure Fifa has done enough since May to deserve being left in peace this week.
Fifa also hopes so, and aims to persuade the US Department of Justice that it is a victim of systemic corruption and should not be indicted.
So, on Friday, the 209 members can also vote through wide-ranging reforms to restructure Fifa. These would dilute the president’s authority, empower Fifa’s staff and increase oversight by independent experts.
If Fifa was indicted, it would join 41 football and marketing officials, plus marketing agencies, who have been charged or pleaded guilty so far in the sprawling US case. Blatter, who cannot be extradited from Switzerland, is a confirmed target.
The election show is to be held in downtown Zurich where Fifa will also open its US$200 million (Dh734.59m) museum this week.
Perhaps police and Blatter will join them.
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