Succession planning is in full swing at Football Federation Australia, as Frank Lowy prepares for his final year at the helm.
Lowy has spearheaded soccer’s regeneration over the past 10 years, including three World Cup berths and the success of the A-League.
The 83-year-old Lowy, deputy chairman Brian Schwartz and director Phillip Wolanski will all leave the FFA board in November 2015.
The Holocaust survivor who built a global shopping mall empire insists that will be the end of his immense influence at FFA headquarters.
“It won’t be difficult. I just won’t be there,” Lowy told the crowd at Melbourne Victory’s season launch.
“I’d be lying if I said I’ll be happy to give up this job.
“But none of us are irrepealable … I’m looking forward to handing this position over to a worthy recipient.
“There’s many people that are able and willing.”
The appointment will be critical for a sport that has been transformed from basket case to burgeoning force under Lowy’s watch.
But Lowy downplayed its importance.
“Let’s not forget we have a very, very good chief executive (David Gallop) … managing football is the job of him and his team,” he said.
FFA have formed a nominations committee and signed up recruitment firm Egon Zehnder to assist in the search for Lowy’s successor.
“They have amassed some 15 to 20 people that they think may be suitable,” he said.
Reflecting on a crusade that started with the federal government’s damning Crawford review of Australian soccer in 2003, Lowy spoke humbly about how he’d changed the game.
“I think I did a reasonable job,” he said.
“It’s in very good shape, but it wasn’t easy to get here.”
Lowy was “ecstatic” to have launched the FFA Cup and pumped the Asian Cup up as being “practically the biggest sporting event Australia has had, other than the Olympics”.
But FFA’s failed bid to host the World Cup remains a sore point.
“Nobody is more disappointed than I am. I’m still losing sleep over it,” he said.
Lowy added that it would be premature to discuss the bid process prior to the release of the Garcia report into World Cup vote corruption.
“The government put up 45 million dollars (for the bid), I think we spent most of it wisely,” he said.
“It’s not very often that a nation is bidding for a major sporting event and gets it the first time.
“We’ve learned a lot. We needed to learn a lot. The process is very complex.
“If and when we’re going to bid (for the World Cup again), we’ll be wiser than we were the first time.”
Lowy also announced on Wednesday that Caltex Australia chief financial officer Simon Hepworth and Melbourne Victory company secretary Chris Nikou had been appointed to the FFA board on two-year terms.
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