Maldives To Support Bin Hammam In Title Race

Bahrain's Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and current president of AFC, Hammam are set to compete for the West Asia seat on the FIFA Executive Committee.

According to reports in the foreign media, this is the first time Hammam has been challenged since 1996 for the seat.

In an interview to maldivesoccer.com, FAM President Mr. Ali Azim said that it is more likely for FAM to give their vote to AFC President, Mr. Hammam “There are growing tensions in the AFC and this would become worse if the person in FIFA executive committee is different from the president of AFC. This would also hinder the progress of AFC and it would effect small nations like us”.

According to Azim, Bahrain’s Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa also made an official one day visit to the Maldives to get the support of Football Association of Maldives.

“Shaikh Salman also asked us to give his support for the bid. He proposed to offer help in restructuring the Association and on other various issues”. Azim further elaborated that AFC’s president Hammam proposed that he would try to help in the training of personnel in the Association.

Hammam had also visited India few days back to garner support from the biggest South Asian country.

There are some few bigger nations in support of Shaikh Salman’s bid including China, Hong Kong, Syria, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Vietnam and Japan. Some of the issues highlighted by them include the changes bin Hammam has proposed - namely the relocation of the AFC headquarters to outside Malaysia, the signing of a 12-year contract that would end in 2020 with possible marketing partners World Sport Group, and amendments to AFC statutes that would eventually disqualify Shaikh Salman's executive committee candidacy.