COULD a minor revolution have just occurred in Scottish football without anyone noticing? This thought is inspired by learning that the much-maligned Scottish Football Association (SFA) consulted people in the game before their board decided to support Gianni Infantino for the post of president of the sport’s world governing body, Fifa.
The election takes place tomorrow and will surely trigger wholesale changes in the game. There was no gainsaying the embarrassment the SFA felt when their previous choice for Sepp Blatter’s old job, Uefa president Michel Platini, was kicked out of football after it was revealed he had received a £1.3 million from Fifa via Blatter, coincidentally about the time that Platini did not stand for the Fifa presidency against the old Swiss goat.
Now they have plumped for Infantino, who has sworn to reform Fifa, but this time the SFA did something unheard of – they actually asked lots of people involved in football for their views on who they should support. They even included fans in the form of Supporters Direct Scotland, (SDS) a group that has probably more right than most to claim that it speaks for the fans.
According to the SFA: “During the process of identifying a preferred candidate, the Scottish FA board consulted with the wider Scottish football family via the Congress meeting in February.
“Congress includes representatives from league bodies and affiliates, PFA Scotland, Supporters Direct Scotland, Coaches and Managers’ Association, sportscotland, Scottish Senior Football Referees Association and Scottish Football Writers’ Association.”
Several sources have confirmed that this consultation did indeed take place at the Congress held earlier this month.
Supporters Direct Scotland said yesterday: “As a member of the Scottish FA Congress, as a body representing the interests of supporter groups, SDS played a role in the Scottish FA’s consultation process when choosing their candidate for the forthcoming Fifa elections.”
The chairman of SDS,
Neil Bone, the organisation’s representative within the Congress, added: “We believe this is a historic opportunity to reform Fifa and we support all measures to improve the governance and transparency of the organisation.
“We believe the best candidate will be the one who leads big change, embraces openness and transparency, and who fundamentally restores good governance and the good reputation to international football’s leading organisation.
“We believe one key reform should be that no president should serve more than two consecutive terms of office and we urge the new holder of the office to abide by that.”
In a sense it won’t matter if Infantino doesn’t win tomorrow – the clamour for change is so overwhelming it will happen. And if a body as monolithic as the SFA have been in the past can learn to listen to the views of everyone in the game, then there really is hope for football.
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