UEFA to set election date as hunt for new candidate to fill FIFA Council slot begins

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By Andrew Warshaw

March 16 – UEFA have confirmed that they will have to hold a special election for one single place on the FIFA Council since there are now only three candidates being elected for the four seats available at the European governing body’s congress next month.

Originally, five candidates were running but Russian Deputy Prime Minister and 2018 World Cup chief Vitaly Mutko was deemed ineligible by FIFA’s review committee because of a clash between his sporting and political interests, while the ex- President of the Icelandic federation, Geir Thorsteinsson, withdrew due to UEFA’s own eligibility rules.

Under Aleksander Ceferin’s plan to make UEFA’s governance more watertight and credible, last month UEFA’s executive committee ruled that candidates for senior positions must hold an active office in their respective national association – specifically president, vice-president, general secretary or CEO.

That caused a rethink for Thorsteinsson who used to be chairman of the Icelandic FA but was recently succeeded by former Icelandic international Gudni Bergsson.

The three candidates elected unopposed on April 5 at the UEFA Congress in Helsinki, Finland, will join the FIFA Council in May in Bahrain. They are the president of the Hungarian federation, Sandor Csanyi, Montenegro’s Dejan Saviceciv, and Costakis Koutsokoumnis of Cyprus.

UEFA now has to find a new date to complete its membership of the 37-member governing FIFA panel.

“As a consequence of Mr. Thorsteinsson’s withdrawal, UEFA will need to hold an additional election to designate a further European representative for a 4-year term to the FIFA Council, and an Extraordinary UEFA Congress will therefore be organised later this year at a date to be decided in due course,” a UEFA statement said.

Quite when that will be is open to question since FIFA’s statutes require a four-month window between announcing candidates and the election.

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