Eyeing an endgame

Jordan’s Prince Ali Bin Al Hussain last week picked a fight with the most powerful man in football.

The Sandhurst-educated major general announced he will run for election as president of Fifa, the sport’s world governing body, in May. He is the man many hope will finally end the scandal-tainted 17-year reign of Sepp Blatter, the Swiss veteran who seems to garner more behind-the-scenes support with every passing controversy.

Prince Ali has the backing of Europe’s top man Michel Platini, but he has plenty of work to do to convince Fifa’s faceless kingmakers that his mandate of transparency — of cleaning up football — is the way forward.

“I am seeking the presidency of Fifa because I believe it is time to shift the focus away from administrative controversy and back to sport,” the 39-year-old said when announcing his surprise candidacy on Tuesday.

“The headlines should be about football, the beautiful sport, not about Fifa.”

His rhetoric is what fans — who are sick of the opaque decision-making that gave the 2018 World Cup to Russia and 2022 edition to Qatar — want to hear.

And Platini was quick to announce: “I know Prince Ali well. He has all the credibility required to hold office. We now await his proposals and his programme for the future of football.”

The head of Jordan’s Football Association was elected as Asia’s Fifa vice-president in 2011, allowing him to sit on the organisation’s powerful Executive Committee (ExCo) at the age of just 35.

However, his position of strength on his home continent was significantly weakened when Asian Football Confederation (AFC) boss Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, a Blatter acolyte, pushed through legislation to ensure that in future, the AFC president would automatically take the Fifa vice-president’s position — a post that Prince Ali currently holds. That means he will be off the ExCo in May unless he can engineer a victory in the polls.

And, in another blow to Prince Ali’s hopes, just 24 hours after his announcement, the 11 nations of the Oceania Football Confederation announced their unanimous backing for Blatter as he seeks a fifth term in office.

So with Asia and Oceania distancing themselves and Africa firmly pro-Blatter, Prince Ali is light on potential allies. He will be forced to look to Europe, where he has backers. However, the pro-change vote could be divided between him and Frenchman Jerome Champagne — the only other person to announce he will stand — to form a power base.

Champagne has challenged Prince Ali to make clear his campaign portfolio, saying: “It [the election] is about platforms, concrete proposals and visions. Mine are known, clear and public. So let’s wait for the release of the other alleged candidates’ programmes and let’s start the democratic and fair debate that I have been calling upon since the first day of my campaign — the debate we all, and football, needs.”

Prince Ali has been praised for his efforts in successfully campaigning for the lifting of a ban on women wearing headscarves on the pitch, while he also made a public call for the Garcia report into possible corruption in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding processes to be made public.

“The world’s game deserves a world-class governing body — a service organisation and a model of ethics, transparency and good governance,” he said last week.

He is now in Australia attending the AFC Asian Cup, which started last Friday, as he begins what is likely to be a fraught — and, most likely, fruitless — four months of campaigning for Fifa’s top job.

Now may be the time for change, but whether or not Prince Ali can swing the balance of power away from Swiss stalwart Blatter, who remains the odds-on favourite to be re-elected, remains to be seen.