By James Dostoyevsky
July 8 – Angel Maria Villar Llona is a lot of things to a lot of people. He is President of the Spanish Football Association, RFEF. He is the Acting UEFA President. He is the Senior Vice President of UEFA. He is a Vice President of FIFA. He is the Chairman of FIFA’s Legal Committee. He is the Chairman of the FIFA Referees’ Committee. He is the Chairman of the Organising Committee for the FIFA World Cup. He is the Chairman of the FIFA Bureau for the Russia 2018 World Cup. He is the Deputy Chairman of the FIFA Committee for Club Football. He is a Member of the Bureau of the FIFA Council, and he is of course also a Member of the FIFA Council.
But Villar Llona wants more.
As a staunch member of FIFA’s Old Guard, he knows the nuances of every trick in the book. Because above anything else, Villar Llona is a savvy politician who has survived decades in power, both in Spain as well as at the top of FIFA. Nearly unscathed.
He now wants it all: he is ogling the UEFA Presidency – and doing everything he possibly can to have the UEFA ExCo Members support his bid.
Enter Saturday, July 9 in Paris. A somewhat tumultuous UEFA ExCo meeting that turned slightly sour when Villar Llona demanded that ‘his’ ExCo (after all, he thinks he is the UEFA President) support his candidacy. After hours of squabbling, the French delegate plainly refused her support, while clean-man-Gill proved once again that he cannot be fooled by simple words: he claimed that he could not support the Spaniard since there were no manifestos on the table. At this stage, Villar Llona mildly lost the plot in an increasingly confrontational 4-hour UEFA ExCo meeting and claimed that the ExCo’s support had nothing to do with any manifesto but “with the person who is a candidate”. This did not sway another Member either: the Hungarian FA President, Sandor Csanyi, remained firm with his view that the ExCo should not recommend any candidate for election at this time. And the final outcome was one that would not have pleased Villar Llona: “his” UEFA ExCo, which he thought was well under control, voted not to go public with any statement at all.
If he thought that this unexpected outcome was bad, then Angel Maria Villar-Llona may have forgotten about a few other problems he has festering in the background, and some on his home turf.
In November 2015 he was sanctioned for failing to cooperate with the official investigation into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process. Villar Llona at first refused to cooperate with former FIFA Ethics chief investigator Michael Garcia and allegedly later tried to have him thrown off the case. FIFA’s Ethics Judge Hans-Joachim Eckert’s Adjudicatory Chamber issued a statement saying: Angel Maria Villar Llona “failed to behave in accordance with the general rules of conduct applicable to football officials in the context of the investigations conducted by the then chairman of the investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee regarding the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup bids, thereby violating article 13 of the FCE. As he subsequently expressed his commitment to collaborate and demonstrated willingness to cooperate, he has been sanctioned with a warning and a fine of CHF 25,000.” (How will he pass an integrity check when another official was banned from running for a similar position after he had been fined not 25 thousand but 3 hundred Swiss Francs?)
In Spain Villar Llona has growing problems that are gnawing at his reputation: A candidate for the Spanish FA presidency, Miguel Angel Galan, filed a lawsuit in the Court of Instruction of Majadahonda against him, alleging that he had deliberately delayed the electoral process and in doing so violated a Ministerial Order that is enshrined in Spanish Law. Galan believes the elections should have been held in the first third of the year as provided in the Sports Act for the Olympic Federations. Galan has called for Villar Llona to be disqualified from public office and to be banned from standing for election, which under this rule has a disqualification period of 9-15 years.
Galan filed 29 documents in evidence and asked the court to take evidence from the Spanish Sports Minister Miguel Cardenal, La Liga president Javier Tebas and the Spanish FA General Secretary, himself a Spanish FA presidential candidate, Jorge Perez. Villar Llona was summoned to appear in court in Spain on June 23, 2016 and will have to testify as a Defendant on September 15, 2016 (a bit unfortunate, since UEFA scheduled an Extraordinary Congress for September 14 in Athens where Villar Llona expects to be elected UEFA President).
But there is more: Villar Llona is subject of an investigation for alleged improper payments to two Spanish clubs – Recreativo Huelvo and Marin – and for having helped them financially. The investigation alleges that because of the alleged support, the two clubs avoided automatic relegation (in breach of Spanish Sports Law, they had failed to pay staff and players, it is alleged). It is claimed that Recreativo received €200,000 to pay coach Jose Luis Oltra, which allowed to the club to avoid relegation. Considering that the RFEF usually comes down very hard on clubs who fail to comply with the rules – a notable example is Elche, who were relegated from the top league without much ado – the treatment of Recreativo raised many questions. As a result of it all, Spain’s Sports Council raided the headquarters of the RFEF in Madrid and Spain’s Administrative Tribunal for Sport (TAD) launched an investigation into Villar Llona, but spared him suspension. Spanish media reports have since indicated that Villar Llona would not be permitted to run for re-election at the RFEF, should the Spanish Government find that the support he allegedly provided to Recreativo Huelvo was illegal.
And if that is not enough: there are five more cases pending in Spain, where Villar Llona’s integrity is being tested. And he has a host of critics from all walks of life on top of everything else. Be that omnipresent Mark Pieth who will currently seems to be grabbing any microphone or camera that is pointing in his direction or journalists from all walks of life who have closely followed the Spanish Grande of Basque descent. One such critic is Pål Ødegård, a self-styled “Norwegian sailor and freelance football writer”, who lives in Valencia. His very detailed article can be found here https://medium.com/@paalpot75/%C3%A1ngel-mar%C3%ADa-villar-is-the-spanish- fox-ready-657cd49948f9#.mb87zunx9 and is well worth a read.
What few people know, if any, is Villar Llona’s modus operandi, say, during the hot phase of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process. There, he regularly sent emissaries from several bids to “speak with his son if you want our help”. We know what that “help” would have entailed. But that is an altogether different matter. Or is it?
UEFA can ill afford to to elect a new president who is staunchly embedded in old structures. And worse, one who is very much part of the ‘old FIFA’ that has still not understood that times have changed.
How else can one explain the Membership of a man on FIFA’s Ethics Committee (of all Committees!) who was the busiest of all lobbyists for Morocco (v. the South African Bid) and whose offers to Jack Warner seem to have been brushed under a very large carpet.
People have memories and people have data. People also remember the days of the 1994 US World Cup where the same man was at one Chuck Blazer’s beck and call. And a close ally of Sunil Gulati, himself a Member of numerous FIFA Committees and lead fiddler within the reconstituted (if not reformed) CONCACAF and the USSF. Is he the Puppet Master who is holding the strings of yet another Trinidadian man (haven’t we already had enough of Trinidadian men in football?!) who was properly unmasked by Lasana Liburd a few days ago (see here: http://wired868.com/2016/07/08/we-dont-need-the-ttfa-board-djw-and-salazar-lift-the-lid-in-explosive-i95-5-interview/), and whose very odd ways should immediately disqualify him from running for CFU President. (Insideworldfootball will be following up on this story next week)
But the Old Guard, anywhere, sticks together like glue. The spoils that are distributed in football attract all sorts of oddballs, nefarious operators and plain criminals. Still. Nothing has really changed.
As long as FIFA employs people in its key committees who should – at least – be banned from holding any office in football, there cannot be change. And the question is: who wants change? Clearly not those who still call the shots and continue to run the world’s biggest show called football.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1714999892labto1714999892ofdlr1714999892owedi1714999892sni@o1714999892fni1714999892