Intelligent, influential and seriously connected. Introducing Reynald Temarii. The footballer turned suave, political heavyweight is one of the South Pacific’s most powerful people, with close ties to the likes of FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.
Widely acknowledged for reviving football throughout the Pacific region, a previously outstanding public image also included activism over HIV/AIDS, poverty and unemployment.
His bosses at the Oceania Football Confederation even go as far to say Temarii’s “led a life many could only dream of.”
In just a few years, Temarii has set many new precedents; both personally and in the administration of the game.
He became the first Pacific Islander to be elected president in the confederation’s 40-year history in 2004, ending the iron-like grip of Australia and New Zealand.
He was re-elected OFC president in January in a unanimous sign of solidarity from the game’s regional bosses and was rewarded recently when the world body FIFA appointed him a vice-president, the first official from the Oceania region to reach that exclusive status in the executive committee of the world’s biggest sport.
But perhaps his greatest legacy to date has been how he has endeared himself to so many Pacific peoples outside the footballing fraternity.
Temarii is a man in a hurry, who was working around the clock to ensure his vision for Oceania is implemented.
Taking a leaf from FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, a man he has great admiration for and accredits for helping OFC get to the position it is in now, he has worked closely with Oceania’s 12-member nations at local government and non-government level which has helped raise the profile of the confederation and established many new fruitful partnerships.
And his political experience as Tahiti’s former Minister for Youth, Sport and Community Life also comes in handy.
His approach to spreading the football gospel has been to treat football as a unifying force, particularly in Melanesian hotspots such as the Solomon Islands where it is the national sport.
And by linking football development with programmes aimed at resolving the region’s myriad of social problems, particularly youth illiteracy, unemployment and public health, he has won many fans, particularly the top brass at FIFA, who have been impressed with the youthful management combination of Temarii, General-Secretary/CEO Tai Nicholas (Cook Islands descent) and deputy General-Secretary, Frederic Guillemont (French), all of whom are still in their thirties.
Most recently Temarii was thrust into the Australian football limelight as the man who helped secure the Wellington Phoenix’s future in the A-League and the Asian Champions League.
Leaning on Asian Football Confederation president Mohammed Bin Hammam, Temarii managed to get Bin Hammam to back down and allow a five-year extension to the Phoenix’s licence to play in Asia.
And let’s not forget, football is in Temarii’s blood.
He is a former national player who represented Tahiti for over a decade culminating in a gold medal win at the 1995 South Pacific Games. He also spent time in France playing in the country’s top professional football league with FC Nantes.
But Reynald’s meteoric rise through the ranks of the OFC and FIFA and the world of football came to a sudden halt last week. A chance lunch appointment with a British journalist posing as an American lobbyist for the USA WC 2022 bid has changed his life forever.
In what many people claim was a set up to make a story to sell, Termarii was asked if he could be influenced in his voting for the 2022 WC bidding process.
Representing Oceania, the poorest football federation in the world and severely cash strapped, Termarii did not ask for money for himself but said he would be interested in talking to the agent if they could guarantee $2 million US to build a football academy.
He selflessly did not ask for the money for himself or his country, he asked for the money to build a football academy in New Zealand.
But FIFA Executive Committee member Reynald Temarii has now been banned from all football for one year and fined after FIFA’s Ethics Commission reacted to the allegations in the English media of vote-rigging and voting collusion.
He will therefore be absent when the world federation’s executive committee votes on hosting rights to the World Cup finals tournaments of 2018 and 2022 – a vote lost for Australia’s bid, some would say.
However, even FIFA President Sepp Blatter believes investigations into its executive committee by British newspaper the Sunday Times were unfair.
Football’s world governing body has handed out bans to two senior figures and suspended four more after a corruption enquiry prompted by reports in the British newspaper.
While acknowledging the men were in the wrong, Blatter criticised the methods used in the investigation. “I’m not pleased about that because this is not very fair.” Blatter said of the way the scandal was staged.
“But I cannot say that it is very fair when you open traps to entrap people.
“These bans and decisions may not have found total support of all the members of the executive committee, it would be exaggerated to pretend that,” Blatter said.
The OFC has also lost one of its most bright and most energetic leaders.
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