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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 5 hours 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. He is 40 years Blatter’s junior, the organisation’s youngest vice-president and 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. Osama Al Sharif, a Jordanian journalist and commentator, said of Prince Ali: “He made major improvements to Jordanian football and this was reflected in the growing public support for the national team. He is looked upon as a international representative of Jordanian youth, being young himself.”
His close resemblance to his late father, King Hussein, and the fact that his mother, Queen Alia, died in a helicopter accident when he was young has enhanced his popularity at home, Al Sharif said. King Abdullah entrusted Prince Ali with running the palace guard and in 2008, Jordan’s main security body, the national centre for security and crisis management.
After finishing his officer training at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst in 1994, Prince Ali served as a pathfinder in the Jordanian special forces and then completed his university education at Princeton in New Jersey. Back in Jordan, he took up the leadership of the Jordanian Football Association, where he mounted a campaign to expand women’s involvement in football in the country by allowing the wearing of the hijab and special uniforms. Prince Ali was instrumental in persuading Fifa to lift its ban on the hijab in 2010.
As Fifa vice-president, he 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 associations. At present, the organisation’s headquarters retains four-fifths of its income. Prince Ali has said he wants to upgrade the role of member associations, particularly in the developing world, and downgrade the power of the job he is vying for, the Fifa presidency, to make it less imperial. He 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.”