Curtain falls on election as players lick wounds but look forward to a new AFC

mandarin oriental

By John Duerden in Kuala Lumpur
May 2 – It is hard to know which was the most extraordinary sight at the Asian Football Confederation’s Extraordinary Congress at the Mandarin Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday morning: Sheikh Salman Ebrahim Al-Khalifa winning the election to become the next president of the AFC in the first round of voting, his bitter rival Yousuf Al Serkal coming in last or Sepp Blatter lecturing delegates about the necessity of returning to core football values.

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Al Serkal bites back with letter to FIFA and AFC members

yousuf al serkal

By Andrew Warshaw
May 1 – Any chance of Thursday’s Asian football Presidential election vote being cleanly contested has totally evaporated following an unsavoury 11th-hour spat between the two front-runners, both of whom have thrown verbal grenades in each other’s direction, prompting the intervention of FIFA.

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