After meeting with all five candidates in Zurich, U.S. Soccer revealed its endorsement for Friday’s FIFA presidential election.
Federation president Sunil Gulati announced U.S. Soccer would vote for Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan on Thursday, and the presidential nominee subsequently expressed his thanks for the public endorsement.
.@ussoccer will vote for @AliForFIFA for President of #FIFA
— Sunil Gulati (@sunilgulati) February 25, 2016
I am proud to receive the support of @ussoccer, joining my vision for a new, transparent, fair and honest #FIFA that puts football first.
— Ali Al Hussein (@AliBinAlHussein) February 25, 2016
Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and Gianni Infantino are considered the two frontrunners in Friday’s election. Tokyo Sexwale and Jerome Champagne are the two other candidates in the running to formally replace Sepp Blatter.
Each member association, excluding currently-suspended Kuwait and Indonesia, will cast their vote. There will likely be more than one round of voting, as a two-thirds majority is needed in order to win the first ballot. In the subsequent rounds, only a simple majority is needed.
FIFA.com and FIFA’s YouTube channel will begin broadcasting election coverage at 2 a.m. on Friday, while ESPN and Univision Deportes will start covering the election at 7 a.m.
What do you think of U.S. Soccer’s decision? Who would you vote for?
Share your thoughts below.
4 votes for the Prince in the final. Call it FBI backlash call UEFA rule the coup now, or call it incompetence.
Well …that didn’t work out!!!!
I’m a little surprised at the comments, just because a country doesn’t having a strong national team or even a professional league doesn’t mean they don’t care about soccer.
I lived in Kurdistan for two years and everyone there is crazy over soccer. Will Iraq be able to get the world cup any time soon? No. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a voice.
I have no problem with smaller counties like qatar getting the world cup – it’s about how they got it. But if we just have the Euro country’s running it those smaller countries will never get it.
how relevant a soccer nation is the US? based on quozzel’s write up, the U S shouldn’t vote or at least, be restricted to just one vote while soccer nations like Germany,England,Brazil, Argentina and co get multiple votes! such a mind boggling theory!
Every member of Fifa deserve to have their voices heard. Football is not about 32nations who compete in the world cup every four years, its more than that!
Football is not about the Euros, Afcon, Cop a America, Gold Cup,Asian Championship, its more than that.
Football is not the biggest sport/team Sport because its the no.1 sport in Germany but cuz globally its number one.
whether in favelas in sao Paolo or in tiny Micronesia, or in chilly cold Finland or in war torn Somalia the game unites people, so even if most of these countries won’t make the world cup or Euros and other continental cups you can’t deny them the right of voting in The FIFA election!
I was wondering why Gulati canceled class this week, now I see why, I guess I didn’t put two and two together. On a more serious note, this seems to me like a rallying cry for other nations to join in voting for Prince Ali. This might mean that they see Ali as a longshot at this point, which would be extremely discouraging.
Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa is a very bad person, like even for FIFA
would like to see Jerome Champagne, but that isnt going to happen
Sexwale forever!!!
Most idiotic post ever.
They have a name for that voting thing, Democracy.
you seem to forget our own officials were caught In the middle of this corruption fiasco together with the French and the Germans.
So much for the “insignificant” countries being the culprits.
Donald, you should think before you post and especially before you call someone idiotic. In fact, the over representation of tiny countries in Africa and Asia was behind Blatter’s entire strategy for maintaining power. It’s why the World Cups have been in South Africa and will be in Qatar. How do you get everyone on board with world cups in random places that have no historical connection to the game? You bribe. The fact that officials in larger confederations–whether here (an unsubstantiated fact I might add given that Blazer was not affiliated with USSF), in Germany or France–are complicit does not take away from the fact that the the voting structure creates horrible incentives and is not fairly representative. So I don’t care what you call it, it’s a problem and that was his fundamental point, which you apparently don’t seem to get. “Yuge!”
Even more idiotic than the previous one. FIFA’s stated goal is to bring football to new areas in the world. South Africa, Qatar, United States…… Do you care to point out our “historic connection to the game” before 1994? According to your moronic theory, we must’ve bribed somebody to get it. Btw, how do explain Brazil, Japan, Germany and Russia holding the World Cup?
Please educate yourself or let this discussions to the grown ups.
Everyone seems to just thinks the problem was Sepp, so then how he was able to stay in power must be whats wrong with FIFA. It’s really just the lack of over site rather then all out failure of the system. I do actually think term limits would be a better answer.
Got no problem with democracy, Rob. I just like it to be REPRESENTATIVE democracy. I wasn’t proposing a switch to iron-fisted fascism.
The bigger problem is “uninvested voters”. Way too many guys voting have no skin and no stake in the game, no chance at the big dance…but they have a vote, and it’s worth a lot to certain people.
What happens to that vote then is predictable, especially since nobody was paying attention until Loretta Lynch and Co. swooped in out of a clear blue sky and started bagging and tagging. Which, as other posters pointed out, gets you World Cups in South Africa and Qatar, and gets you an Asian oil-money sheikh as your head of World Football. And it gets you winter World Cups in the middle of deserts, played in stadiums built by foreign slave labor.
Call me Euro-Americo-biased and all that jazz, that just doesn’t sound like democracy to me, sorry.
If it sounds like “idiocy”, well, also sorry. You will pardon me if I hold your above response in, uhm, similar regard.
Fewer votes just means fewer people to buy off. The head of UEFA at the time Platini voted for Qatar and was one of the biggest supporters. Perhaps it’s the billions Qatar has put into French football and possibly even pressure from the President Sarkozy due to economic deals between France and Qatar. This wasn’t just buying off the Presidents of a few a few small islands.
Nice try but “representative” democracy as dictated by money is no democracy at all.
I’m sorry if this bursts your elitist bubble but if you are a FIFA member than you have “skin” in the game, that’s how FIFA, was set up from the beginning. You don’t like it? You can always form your own organization away from the unwashed masses.
One country one vote is reasonable. Now stop giving Rob an excuse to blast America – not that he needs one.
You guys clearly missed the gist of my complaint. One country one vote is NOT reasonable because some continental federations are so much more balkanized than others. We’re going to REWARD Africa for having 50 countries, and penalize South America for having just 10 by giving Africa five times the voting mass? And CONCACAF is only worth 80% of Europe, Africa, or Asia?
In an ideal world, somebody would come up with some magic formula that factors in population, support for soccer, past performances on the field, ranking, financial contribution, etc, etc, to determine the exact fair ratio of Actual Value to World Soccer, and the country would be awarded voting strength accordingly. Since nobody will ever agree on such a formula, though…
…it needs to be one CONTINENT, one vote…and all of a sudden I think things would be a lot more equitable. It’s been since 1994 since North America hosted…every other confederation has had at least one and in a couple cases two since then. How the votes are apportioned within each confederation is probably a matter for the individual confederatins to address.
CONCACAF is getting short shrift on World Cups, though, and of course, as his last petty act, Blatter held a vote that allowed Europe to bid for 2026…which essentially takes it away from the USA yet again. No, I do not think the USA deserves to be the center of world soccer…but we deserve a World Cup more than once every 40 or 50 years, too.
A whole new world. A dazzling place I never knew.
The whole thing is retarded as sin because of the way FIFA is now put together. One country, one vote. Even if that country is tiny Micronesia, population 6,000. Counts just as much as anybody else’s, even the USA’s or Brazil’s.
A simple look at the counter tells you of the 209 member-nations of FIFA, there’s 46 counties in Asia, and another 54 in Africa…which means you can get just shy of a straight majority (100 votes even, actually) with just those two Confederations alone. CONCACAF gets only 40 votes, most of them tiny island nations of no significance, and then of course South America REALLY has a complaint, getting just 10 votes total of the 209 since there’s only ten countries in South America…just 5% of the total vote. Sounds REAL fair, there. Oceania – headlined by New Zealand – actually has a higher total of votes than South America; 11 votes.
Big problem with all that is, the vast majority of the smaller nations from Asia, Africa, and CONCACAF have nothing better to do with their vote except sell it to the highest bidder, since they aren’t going to making the World Cup anytime soon.
Whole system is a mess and lends itself to intrinsic corruption.
Certain countries have assuredly not earned the right to vote in this thing. And yet they are…and the Jack Warners of all these fly-by-night third-world federations are messing the whole thing up for the people who take soccer seriously. Until we get the Micronesias punted from the voting process any election is ultimately going to be a corrupt farce.
What we need is a Great Compromise like who the US congress is setup. 1 vote/Country in the senate; Multiple votes based on FIFA ranking(ex. Germany #1= 100 votes; Tonga #204= 1 vote). #150-204 get 1 vote each, #100-149 get 10 votes each and so on and so forth. Simple majority in both to pass anything. 2/3’s to change rules/tournament setups. This is contingent on the FIFA rankings being reasonably accurate(They don’t have to be exact). You could also set a cap on the number of votes based on continent to 300 for Europe/S. America. Problem solved.
sounds reasonable to me.
Not that everything must be American, and not that congress is a model group.. but USA got around this issue by giving each state the same voting power (2 senators) but supplimented it with a population based voting reps (state reps). Agreement fairly represents the those from Delaware and the Californians..
Every nation gets 1 vote is a nice theory but silly that nations with no footballing interest has so much voting power. The entire point of some of these federations is voting (corruption) based power moves.. nothing to do with the game. Some kind of supplimented votes based on football based involvement would be a good idea.
To Mr Ali, seems like a good and qualified candidate, but it sounds like he doesn’t have the support of many others..
Quozzel, you lost all credibility on your first post by using the word retarded. Very ignorant word to use on a forum and I am not one who gets offended easily.
Show some class.
You’re not easily offended?
Sigh. You have no idea how you’ve already pegged yourself. But keep sayin’ that stuff loud enough we can hear ya down here in South Cackalacki…that sound you hear is us hooting and twirling noisemakers.
And watch who you’re telling to “have class”, bunky. You have no IDEA how rude I can get if so inclined. 😉
You could have made your point without resorting to using the word retarded that way. It’s hurtful. Try not to be hurtful.