By Paul Nicholson
July 27 – The chaos of Greek football might be resolving with long awaited federation elections on August 18 and the removal of the normalisation committee imposed by FIFA, but the Greeks will not be left completely on their own.
FIFA has said that a monitoring committee will be set up “to ensure oversight of the operations and processes of the Hellenic Football Federation (HFF) for at least 12 months following the upcoming HFF elections.”
The world governing body and UEFA stepped into the HFF last October to run the daily affairs of the crisis-hit national federation following months of friction between the country’s football authorities and the Greek government, much of it over what to do about fan violence in and around stadiums.
The running of the federation was also affected by discrepancies between Greek national laws and the independence of the federation required under FIFA’s own membership laws.
This had created a host of issues in country and led to the “resignation of the president and other members of the federation’s executive committee due to judicial procedures, the allegations linked to refereeing, as well as the difficulties surrounding the management of ethics cases,” said FIFA last October.
At the time Greece’s Deputy Sports Minister Stavros Kontanis welcomed the move as “a positive development which will be combined with the placement of worthy people to manage a problem that has plagued Greek sports for years.” There is of course an irony in this statement as one of the major issues with FIFA has been government involvement in the game.
In March 2016 the sports ministry cancelled the Greek Cup final following crowd violence at a semi-final tie. Eventually the sports ministry allowed the match to go ahead, but it was played behind closed doors.
The Greek government has never been shy to use football and football politics for its own political ends and there is likely to be more news in this space.
FIFA said: “The monitoring committee will have the mandate to monitor the implementation of the revised HFF Statutes and the overall situation of the HFF including the budgeting and finance, to report on and issue recommendations on the functioning of the HFF, and to monitor actions taken as a result of its recommendations.”
The committee, which will provide FIFA with updates every two months, will be comprised of:
- Herbert Hübel (chairman) – lawyer, member of the Executive Board of the Austrian FA, and a member of the UEFA Legal Committee
• Ivan Vella (member) – Director of Sport Malta, National Teams Manager of the Malta Football Association, and UEFA Venue Director
• Eduardo Dervishi (member) – Director of International Relations and Head of Club Licensing of the Spanish FA
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