How ironic that on the day Australia formally lodged its bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups proverbial knives were being sharpened in Kuala Lumpur for the head (Neck? Back? Damn, it’s gonna be messy, whatever happens) of the president of the Asian Football Confederation, Mohammed bin Hammam.
As we saw with Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysians sure know how to take out a guy when they put their minds to it.
It’s ironic because Hammam was probably the best ally Australia ever had in Asia and his support (though it has hitherto been conditional) is crucial in the political tango that goes in securing votes from FIFA’s executive committee, the body that anoints World Cup hosts.
The Machiavellian antics at the AFC have been going on for years, ever since Hammam squeezed out his rival, the Malaysian football powerbroker and former AFC kingpin Peter Velappan, and took away all his executive responsibilities to the point he was like that sad character, the IT clerk Milton Waddams, in Mike Judge’s brilliant movie Office Space, who becomes a victim of downsizing, gets his stapler taken away and gets shunted into the basement.
Eventually he figures out he’s not wanted and burns the building down. Velappan, who I’ve been fascinated by for some time now, wondering when he’s going to crack, is having his revenge.
The breaking point for the Malay Tamil came with Hammam’s announcement that he intended to move the headquarters of the AFC out of Malaysia for the first time, likely to the Middle East.
Malaysia has long played a role in Asian football politics disproportionate to its FIFA ranking courtesy of having AFC House on its own patch, and for Velappan, already humiliated by Hammam, this was a step too far. In a recent interview with the Japan Times, Velappan said Hammam did “not know the culture of Asian football and has imposed desert values.”
Ouch.
Velappan’s Trojan horse is Sheikh Salman Al Khalifa, who recently received the support of nearly two dozen key Asian backers (including China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan) at the Olympic Council of Asia Sports Congress in Kuwait to take Hammam’s seat on FIFA’s executive committee as representative of the AFC when his term runs out.
The next AFC Congress is in May and Khalifa wants to be installed at that meeting.
Hammam, for his part, is frantically combing through the statutes, trying to find any way to block the Bahraini’s challenge. If he does not retain his seat on the executive committee, he says he will resign as president of the AFC.
The portents are not good for the Qatari. Whatever happens to Hammam, Australia stands to lose.
As Velappan said in another interview, “Asian countries bidding for the World Cup are likely to be handicapped by the current turmoil in the AFC family”.
A rich comment coming from someone who is fomenting the trouble himself and claims to have the best interests of Asian football at heart.
There is also the delicate issue of who Australia supports, Khalifa or Hammam. Football Federation Australia president Frank Lowy has been a limpet on Hammam’s side ever since Australia joined the AFC in 2005 but he will be acutely aware of the need to show solidarity with his friend while publicly stepping back from that relationship with Khalifa hovering in the shadows.
He will also be cognisant of Velappan’s and the West Asia bloc’s historic antipathy to Australia being part of the AFC. How he plays that game will go a long way to determining the success or failure of our World Cup bid.
If Australia 2018 was already a tough ask, it just got a whole lot tougher.
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