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| Fifa election: who is Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, Sepp Blatter's challenger? | Fifa election: who is Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, Sepp Blatter's challenger? |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| The challenger to Sepp Blatter’s grip on global football is not your average sports executive. Prince Ali bin al-Hussein is the brother of King Abdullah of Jordan and a Sandhurst-trained former special forces officer whose speciality was freefall parachute jumps. According to Hashemite tradition, he is the 43rd generation direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. | The challenger to Sepp Blatter’s grip on global football is not your average sports executive. Prince Ali bin al-Hussein is the brother of King Abdullah of Jordan and a Sandhurst-trained former special forces officer whose speciality was freefall parachute jumps. According to Hashemite tradition, he is the 43rd generation direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. |
| Those supercharged establishment credentials notwithstanding, Prince Ali is also seen as the reformist candidate, and not just because he is taking on a 79-year-old man who has been in Fifa’s top job for 17 years. Ali is 40 years Blatter’s junior, and is the organisation’s youngest vice-president as well as the youngest of the original field of challengers. Now, he is the last one standing. | Those supercharged establishment credentials notwithstanding, Prince Ali is also seen as the reformist candidate, and not just because he is taking on a 79-year-old man who has been in Fifa’s top job for 17 years. Ali is 40 years Blatter’s junior, and is the organisation’s youngest vice-president as well as the youngest of the original field of challengers. Now, he is the last one standing. |
| He led the campaign to lift Fifa’s ban on the hijab in women’s football, and pushed for the publication of an internal report into irregularities in the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Prince Ali is running on a platform of transparency and grassroots development, and has promised to drastically increase the proportion of Fifa’s $2bn (£1.3bn) annual revenues that are returned to member states. He also wants to downgrade the power of the job he is vying for, the Fifa presidency, and has pledged to serve just one four-year term. | |
| Prince Ali told the New York Times: “We don’t want an executive president. We want to get to a day when people don’t even know who the president of Fifa is. When that happens, we will know that the organisation is being run the right way and with the right priorities.” | Prince Ali told the New York Times: “We don’t want an executive president. We want to get to a day when people don’t even know who the president of Fifa is. When that happens, we will know that the organisation is being run the right way and with the right priorities.” |