Q&A: Fifa presidential candidate Jerome Champagne outlines his vision for football’s future

Q: How optimistic are you of success?

It’s not about being optimistic or pessimistic, it’s about explaining the future, listening to the needs and having the experience. I was in Fifa for 11 years, dealing with all the federations around the world – I know them, I know what they need, I know their capacities, and the federations they know me. They remember when I was in Fifa, when a federation had a problem I was solving the problems, I was replying quickly, I was helping them all the time and that’s what makes me reasonably optimistic.

Q: What do you say to people who think Fifa should be scrapped altogether?

I disagree completely. It’s not the first time in history Fifa is going through a crisis, like all the international organisations. In 1929 at the time of the stock exchange crash in New York Fifa was nearly bankrupt. Fifa went through difficult times in World War 2. In 1966 the African federations boycotted the World Cup in England because big leaders in Africa like [Kwame] Nkrumah in Ghana, [Julius] Nyerere in Tanzania considered that Africa was not treated correctly.

When I was in Fifa 2001, Fifa went through a very difficult crisis. In six months two [marketing] partners Kirch and ISL went bankrupt and we had a lot of difficulties and at that time Fifa had no money.

Today the crisis is very severe. But if you look at the fundamentals: since last May the Fifa competitions were organised perfectly. The Women’s World Cup in Canada was a sports success and a popular success, the World Cup men under-17 took place in Chile, it was a sports success and a popular success. Look closer to home in Hong Kong, recently we had the Club World Cup in Japan again a sports success and popular success.