ZURICH: Fifa presidential candidate Jerome Champagne has protested to soccer’s world governing body about the number of observers allowed into the hall for Friday’s election, saying he believed they were working for his rivals.
Champagne said 20 observers’ credentials had been given to European ruling body Uefa, whose general secretary Gianni Infantino is running for the Fifa job, and seven to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), whose chief Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa is also a Fifa presidential candidate.
In a letter to Fifa’s electoral commission, Champagne said the presence of observers from the confederations could unfairly influence Friday’s poll because they would have access to the voting delegates.
He said that the accreditations he was complaining about were in addition to the eight granted to each candidate and their teams. A spokesman for the electoral committee said accreditation was in the hands of Fifa, who could not immediately be reached for comment.
Each of Fifa’s 209-member national football associations (FAs) hold one vote at the poll in which five candidates are vying to be elected to lead the global soccer body out of the worst graft scandal in its history.
Several dozen leading football officials have been indicted in the United States and a criminal investigation is also underway in Switzerland, while Fifa president Sepp Blatter has been banned for eight years for ethics violations.