FIFA Name Francois Carrard As Chair Of Reform Committee
By Sean Maslin
If you are going to hire someone whose job it is to clean up your sports organization, you should hire someone with experience in cleaning up messes. On Wednesday FIFA announced that they have selected Swiss attorney Francois Carrard to serve as the chair of their new Reform Committee.
Carrard served as the Director General of the International Olympic Committee from 1990 to 2003. During his time with the organization he helped mitigate the scandal that enveloped the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Ten IOC members were expelled from their positions and body underwent significant changes to their structure including imposing term limits, and the creation of an ethics commission.
All of these items appear to be at the top of Mr. Carrard’s list of things to do at FIFA as well. In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday Carrard said, “The objective is to get acceptable reforms to the world and to restore FIFA’s credibility.” The world governing body of football has been in crisis mode since May when 14 soccer officials were indicted by the United States government for racketeering.
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Carrard will lead a 12 person committee made up of representatives from the six football confederations. There will also be two representatives chosen by World Cup sponsors, a concession given by FIFA in the wake of criticism from Coca-Cola and VISA. The panel’s first meeting will be in mid-September. A report is not expected until February of next year.
While all of this sounds good some of the early apointees are a little dubious. One of the apointees from the Asian Football Confederation, former IOC Vice-President Kevan Gosper, had already been investigated for criminal behavior in relation to the Salt Lake City scandal. Although Mr. Gosper was eventually cleared one has to wonder if choosing someone has in the past been implicated in less than ethical behavior is such a good idea.
The appointment of Gorka Villar from Spain is also a questionable decision. Although his credentials in the game are noteworthy (he is Spain’s General Director for the Football Association) his son, Angel Maria Villar, is currently under investigation by the FIFA Ethics Committee for bribery.
Mr. Carrard’s comments about reform from the outside are also a bit troubling. During the conference call he said, “At some point these outsiders are sitting on the clouds. You have to be in the eye of the storm and moving the reforms with the people inside.”
That is a bit troubling coming from someone whose claim to fame of saving the Salt Lake City Olympics was helped in large part thanks to outside involvement. This is also not the first time that FIFA has tried to fix themselves internally and failed miserably.
The difference between then and now might just be the pressure. With outside government actors looking more closely at FIFA’s questionable behavior the organization might actually try and create some level of change. Whether it will be enough to keep them out of prison is a completely different matter.