AFC unwilling player in FIFA controversy

AS sure as one can be about death and taxes, one can also bank on the inevitable mix of sport and politics. As FIFA seemingly pulls itself apart over the on-off re-election of Brazilian president Joao Havelange, the Asian Football Confederation is being sucked into that same controversy.

The end loser may be the AFC, whose key man, general-secretary Peter Velappan, is being touted as the one compromise candidate everybody can fall behind.

Depending on whose version of the story you read, the main protagonists are Havelange himself, keen for another four-year term; existing Swiss FIFA general-secretary Sepp Blatter, who has his eye on Havelange's job and Sweden's UEFA president Lennart Johansson, who also has veiled ambitions to become world body president.

All of this manoeuvring is concentrated on the office of the presidency, which is thought to be the real seat of future power.

The first journalist to analyse in depth the turbulent atmosphere at FIFA House was the veteran soccer-watcher Sergio de Cesare of the Italian paper La Gazzetta dello Sport.

His conclusion was that a compromise on candidates was the only way that allowed FIFA and UEFA to avoid a bust up; Havelange would be offered the post of honorary FIFA president, Blatter would be made president, while the post of general-secretary would go to Velappan, current general-secretary of the AFC.

In this instance Velappan's attraction rests on two points: his neutral position on the swirling personal politics that surround Havelange's succession and the enormous political bloc votes he potentially controls not only through the 44-member AFC but also through long-term African allies CAF.