FIFA presidential candidate Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein yesterday met Acting Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Andrew Langa as he upped his bid to be elected Fifa president on May 29 in Zurich, Switzerland.
BY staff reporter
Also at the meeting where various football issues were discussed was Zifa president Cuthbert Dube, who will represent Zimbabwe during the voting process.
Prince Ali arrived on Monday night in Harare as he continued his trips around the footballing nations to seek support to unseat the incumbent Fifa president Sepp Blatter, who is seeking another term in office. The Jordanian is expected to visit South Africa, Madagascar and Egypt before the end of this week with another trip to Africa in place before the election.
Besides Blatter, Prince Ali has to battle with the Dutch FA (KNVB) boss Michael Van Praag and former World Player of the Year Luis Figo.
Last week, Prince Ali, speaking to World Football Insider during a roundtable with reporters, criticised Fifa’s decision to spend $27 million on a movie United Passions at the expense of developing football worldwide.
“It was not run by the executive committee. Blatter did to apologise but that’s an issue of mismanagement. That’s just a simple example,” he told the roundtable.
“Development is crucial but I think the approach to it is incorrect. I cannot imagine that an organisation with the wealth that it has and budget that it has does not guarantee that every single national association has the basics of having pitches and kits,” Prince Ali told World Football Insider.
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Zifa is yet to publicly state who they are backing but judging by current developments where the world football governing body has saved the Zifa House in Bulawayo from auction, paid part of the debt to a local bank in addition to clearing various debts, there is no doubt Blatter is Zifa’s man.
Last year, Caf resolved that due to Blatter’s commitment to developing football on the continent, he deserved the vote of all 53 national associations.
On Monday, Council for East and Central Africa Football Association (Cecafa) chairman Leodegar Tenga, who is also a Caf executive committee member said Africa will back Blatter.
“In my capacity as a member of CAF Executive Committee and Chairman of CECAFA, I wish to reiterate the pledge of CAF members taken at Caf General Assembly held in Sao Paulo in June 2014 and that of CECAFA taken at the meeting of the Presidents of CECAFA member associations held in Nairobi on December 14, 2014, to support the candidature of President Blatter in the forthcoming FIFA general elections,” Tenga told a press conference at Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) headquarters in Dar es Salaam on Monday, which was attended by the Daily News of Tanzania.
“He has always considered the African continent as an important constituency of Fifa. I trust that CECAFA members and the entire African FA’s will stand by their word in support of President Blatter’s candidature,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily News of Tanzania.
Tenga becomes the second influential FA leader to back Blatter after Ghana Football Association president and Caf executive committee member Kwesi Nyantakyi said in January that African countries will vote overwhelmingly for Blatter.
“Africa is solidly behind Blatter. You will find he is very popular on the continent,” he told Reuters then. Blatter was influential in bringing the World Cup to Africa for the first time in 2010 via a deliberate rotational system, when it was staged in South Africa while the Financial Assistance Programme and Goal Project have benefitted almost all countries on the continent.
In Zimbabwe, the Goal Project was completed in a record four years under Dube despite Zifa having been the recipients of funding under previous regimes. A new headquarters for Zifa has been approved by Fifa while the Fifa Football for Hope Centre has been completed and opened in Bulawayo’s high density suburb of Luveve.
