December 28 – With the AFC Asian Cup 2019 about to kick off in the UAE where the politicking off the pitch could be as potentially competitive as some of the play on it, the AFC ethics function appears to have fired a warning shot that it is not impotent and that it will observe its own governance rules and use its powers.
Uzbekistan Football Association official Bekhzod Mirtimirov has been suspended from all football activities for two months by the Chairman of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Disciplinary and Ethics Committee for failing to collaborate with an AFC investigation.
His ban is for failing to respond to a request to be interviewed by the AFC in Kuala Lumpur within the stipulated deadline.
It is not known what the investigation is specifically about but as a result, Mirtimirov cannot take part in any football activity for two months.
Uzbekistan was one of just four nations who voted against the governance reform proposals at the AFC Congress in October. Two of the others were UAE and Saudi Arabia, both of whom have had aspirations for the AFC presidency which is up for election in April.
The vote against the reform proposals in November was widely seen as a vote against incumbent president Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa. One of the reform proposals was that presidential candidates need not be nominated by their home federation – a proposal that should help remove any wider non-football geo-politics from the AFC election process.
The suggestion is that Uzbek support to vote against the reform proposals may have been incentivised, though this has not been confirmed nor has it been confirmed as being the subject of the AFC’s investigation.
Saudi Arabia had initially positioned their own candidate to stand in the election before they decided to back the UAE who have nominated Major General Mohammed Khalfan Al-Rumaithi, Commander-in-Chief of Abu Dhabi Police and member of the Executive Council of the emirate of Abu Dhabi
Qatari Saud Al Mohannadi, a vice president of the Qatar FA and an AFC executive committee member, is also on the ballot sheet.
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