FIFA Candidate Sexwale Fails to Exploit Conference Platform

(ATR) Tokyo Sexwale tells Around the Rings he is getting "traction" in his FIFA presidential campaign – but misses a major opportunity to press home his credentials at the Securing Sport conference.

"It’s still early days to know who the frontrunner is. Let’s call myself a late runner," he told ATR after his lacklustre speech in which he failed to outline his vision for a new FIFA or offer any firm pledges.

"I am pleasantly surprised to see how much traction we are getting," the former South African government minister said. "Let’s not rush this on, let’s see how far it goes."

Speaking about the field of seven candidates, he said "I think it augurs well for democracy."

Last week the Confederation of African Football, led by acting FIFA chief Issa Hayatou, refused to throw its support behind Sexwale.

"CAF has not yet announced its decision. They haven’t made up their mind," he said when asked if he expected to count on the support of CAF.

"I come from the African continent but it is important to have all Europe also, to have CONCACAF, to have all of them. I don’t see myself as ‘look, I am an African. I come from South Africa.’"

Sexwale said it would be "good to have African votes… but I think we are a family of football and I would like to see myself as president getting votes from all across the world".

Pushed to say whether he expected to get the majority of Africa’s 54 member federations of FIFA, he said: "That’s an opinion. But let me talk practical.

"Yes, of course I have got numbers but why can’t I get CONCACAF as well," Sexwale insisted. "I am looking forward to Asian [votes]. It doesn’t mean because Sheikh Salman is there… he may qualify for African votes in as much as I would like to qualify for Asia."

Fails to Impress

Sexwale had 30 minutes to explain why he would be the most suitable reaplcement for Sepp Blatter to lead world football, and recover FIFA’s scandal-battered reputation.

But in the first 20 minutes he mentioned FIFA only three times. He spent much of his keynote address talking about his time as an apartheid-era political prisoner with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, his work heading up a FIFA monitoring committee to help resolve the dispute between the Israeli and Palestinian federations and his various charitable initiatives.

Sexwale went off on a diatribe about sponsors’ activism in bringing FIFA change, saying threats by Coca-Cola, Budweiser and others to sever ties wasn’t the answer to fixing FIFA’s ills. Restating comments made on Monday, he said the unintended consequence was that sponsors were "virtually expelling" the president and having a say in appointing the next one.

Speaking briefly about the "threats to sport" -terrorism, failing states and social underdevelopment in nations around the world - he appeared to use his anti-racism efforts as one of the main pillars of his FIFA presidential campaign."Racism is a societal ill that needs to be combatted beyond the field of play. It’s the single most important thing ICSS has to watch out for," he said of conference organiser, the International Centre for Sport and Security.

It was only in the closing minutes of his speech and later when quizzed by reporters that he spoke about FIFA’s crisis and his bid to replace Blatter."We in FIFA brought ourselves to this position by failing to adhere to certain basic standards. It affects officials, sponsors, governments, media and the youth of the world," he told a media briefing.

"This mammoth task of undoing the damage done to the FIFA brand cannot be done by one man," he said, claiming it needed the "collective wisdom" of all FIFA’s 209 member nations in accordance with new FIFA reforms to clean-up the corruption.

When asked by ATR why he squandered the speaking opportunity to steal a march on his six rivals in the FIFA contest, he said: "It was not going to be a sing-song about me. I thought it would be an abuse of a platform. This is not an election platform for me.

"There is still plenty more for the coming four months until February for me to get many, many hours of this kind of thing."

Sexwale said his manifesto would be "very consultative" and would be launched in the next two weeks.

New FIFANow founder Jaime Fuller described Sexwale's speech as "offensive drivel".

"The nonsensical ramblings of his reasoning behind being the president of FIFA, based on being against racism, is such a bizarre platform to take when you consider the state of world football and the dire situation that we are in at the moment," Fuller told ATR.

"I was warned that he is a one-trick pony and he proved that for the fact he spoke for 15 minutes about being locked up on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. He showed no understanding of the need for dire reform within football," he added.

Written by Mark Bisson

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