August 31 – Seven candidates, including two confederation vice presidents, are standing for election to be Africa’s two new representatives on the ruling FIFA Council next month.
The Confederation of African Football is to get two additional seats on the new body, which has replaced the tarnished executive committee and has been significantly expanded as part of the reform process.
CAF’s first vice president Suketu Patel from the Seychelles and second vice president Almamy Kabele Camara of Guinea have been nominated as well as two other members of CAF’s executive committee – the Ghana Football Association president Kwesi Nyantakyi and his counterpart from Madagascar, who is known simply by his first name of Ahmad. The three other candidates are the heads of the football associations in Niger, Senegal and South Sudan – Hamidou Djibrilla, Augustin Senghor and Chabur Goc Alei.
The 36-member Council holds its first meeting in Zurich on October 13 with responsibility for setting the strategic direction of world football’s governing body.
The newly-elected African members will only sit on the council until March next year when another round of elections will be held at the 2017 CAF Congress in Addis Ababa.
Goc’s nomination is interesting in that he was one of only a handful of African voters to publicly support FIFA President Gianni Infantino at last February’s FIFA presidential election. South Sudan is reported to have hosted Infantino in February during his campaign at a time when the CAF leadership was urging its members to vote for Asian football leader Sheikh Salman of Bahrain. Infantino then made South Sudan the first member federation he visited in March as president.
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