By Paul Nicholson
November 1 – A month can be a long and fickle time in Asian football alliances, as was witnessed yesterday at the Asian Football Confederation Congress when Uzbekistan became one of four of the AFC’s 46 federations to vote against statute reform proposals.
Others to vote against the proposals were Saudi Arabia, the UAE and South Korea – all have either a football or geo-political ambition to see their candidates as president of the AFC (though South Korea has yet to announce a contender for the presidency).
They were voting against a proposal that they believed would benefit incumbent president Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and that would allow any national federation to nominate any individual, no matter what their nationality or national federation was, for the presidency.
Quite what Uzbekistan’s motivation was for voting against the proposal which had been cleared by FIFA as being acceptably within governance guidelines, was unclear and perplexing for many of the member associations present – especially those who last month had been at the AFC’s Executive Committee meetings in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
There the president of the National Olympic Committee, and the First Vice President of the Uzbekistan Football Association Umid Akhmatjanov was among among the first to immediately announce support for Shaikh Salman when he announced he would run again for the presidency of the AFC. Taking the AFC executive to Tashkent in the first place was seen as an acknowledgment of the “impact that Uzbekistan has enjoyed in Asian football in recent years”.
Now the Uzbeks seem to have been swayed the other way – whodunnit, why and how?
It is just five and a half months to the AFC Congress that will elect a new president next year. A short space of time in reality but an age in AFC football politics.
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