By Paul Nicholson in Manama, Bahrain
May 7 – Hany Abu Rida, the Egyptian FA president who is standing for election to the FIFA Council, arrived in Manama, Bahrain, for the FIFA Congress from Cairo this afternoon (Sunday May 7) on a private jet accompanied by more than 30 of his African federation colleagues.
Abu Rida invited the African presidents to Cairo on May 4 “for the celebration ceremony in honour of welcoming CAF president Mr Ahmad Ahmad to the headquarters country of CAF, Egypt.”
His three rivals in the election for the FIFA Council – CAF executive committee member Leodgar Tenga from Tanzania, Samir Sobha (Mauritius) and Zelkifili Ngoufonja (Cameroon) – cut lonely figures at the CAF delegate hotel in Manama on Saturday evening. They weren’t invited to the Cairo celebrations.
CAF holds its Congress on Monday where the vote for the final CAF position on the FIFA Council will be taken. The candidates – except for Abu Rida – will have little or no time to lobby for their election support. The voters have spent since May 3 in the company of Abu Rida and at the expense of, presumably, the Egyptian FA. One wonders which way the vote will go.
Not only was Abu Rida offering free accommodation, entertainment and a trip on a private jet but he also offered the lure of the company of FIFA president Gianni Infantino. “We anticipate having the FIFA president Mr INFANTINO Gianni along with AFC federations’ presidents and all the CAF federations’ presidents in attendance to this event,” said the invitation.
It is not clear whether Infantino attended the Cairo events but he did arrive in Manama at about the same time that the African jet landed.
The Cairo delegates gathered in Egypt on May 3 with the welcome celebration being held on May 4 “to be followed on the next day by the Arab Champions League draw ceremony at Egypt’s most historic place, the Pyramids of Giza.” May 5 was presumably a rest day while they recovered from the festivities before their private jaunt to Bahrain on Sunday for their own Congress on Monday and the FIFA Congress later in the week.
Abu Rida was a key supporter of Madagascar’s Ahmad in the CAF presidential elections that saw the end of long-reigning Issa Hayatou, who had become an increasingly bitter rival of Infantino.
The forces stacked up against Hayatou included the Egyptian competitions court prosecutors which sued CAF and Hayatou personally over the $1 billion commercial rights contract awarded to Lagardere Sports. Little known Egyptian company Presentation Sports claims that its offer was greater than the Lagardere offer and that under Egyptian law they should have been given the contract. Abu Rida’s representatives say he is not an owner of Presentation Sports, but the executives named are close associates of his
Since then news has been that the court might drop the challenge to CAF but will not drop the case against Hayatou, which most interpret as a move to prevent him ever returning to the continent’s football hierarchy.
Abu Rida has sat at FIFA’s top table before. He was one of the 24 votes on the executive committee that awarded Russia the 2018 World Cup and 2022 to Qatar. It seems the old ways and the old faces can become the new ways and the same faces if their politics fit.
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