SPORTS> Feature and Column
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SPORTS> Feature and Column
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Will UEFA stay on the coach or take a sports car?
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-01-26 08:49 DUESSELDORF, Jan 25 - A busload of UEFA and FIFA delegates being driven from a five-star hotel to one of their regular official dinners held during events like a UEFA Congress has a lot in common with a holiday coach trip for the elderly. They all meet in the hotel lobby, are escorted to a fleet of waiting coaches and gingerly climb the steps, making sure to grasp hold of the handrail so as not to lose their footing. After a glass or two of fine wine or a sampling of the local brew, they are escorted back afterwards and it is not unknown for some of the more lively delegates to launch into a few Music Hall classics or long-forgotten hits of their youth. "There was I, Waiting at the Church" was one favourite, ancient refrain of a tweedy gentleman of a certain vintage who looked old enough to have been at the first FA Cup final in 1872 when The Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers. Not every football administrator is as old as the hills. Some are so young they are still in their 50s and 60s and there is also a smattering of men in their 40s. Michel Platini, at 51, is among the younger members of the UEFA and FIFA hierarchy, having served on the executive committees of both since 2002. He now stands on the verge of being elected to one of the highest positions in football governance. If he beats 77-year-old Swedish incumbent Lennart Johansson he will become the new president of UEFA, and the first to be born after the organisation was founded in 1954. FORMER GREATS Other sporting organisations, such as the International Olympic Committee, have long since embraced former athletes, gymnasts, swimmers and horsey folk in their management committees. Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC, is himself a former Olympic sportsman who competed in the yachting competitions of 1968, 1972 and 1976 and also played rugby for Belgium. He was 59 when he was elected to his current position in place of the octogenarian Juan Antonio Samaranch. Platini was one of the greatest players in soccer's long history and it seems hard to believe 20 years hae already apssed since he brought his glittering playing career to a close. For most of the last two decades Platini has been in soccer administration -- first as France manager, then co-organiser of the 1998 World Cup in France and since 2002 as a member of the executive committees of the two most powerful governing bodies. There is a long-held belief among millions of fans that fusty old men who never played at the highest level have wielded far too much power in how soccer is run and organised. It is not always a particularly accurate point of view. |
