SAFA president Danny Jordaan has never had it easy when it comes to football elections on the African continent and his elevation to the fourth in command in African football has been met with some discontent in certain areas at CAF.
Jordaan was confirmed on Thursday as the CAF third Vice-President after Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President Amaju Pinnick was removed as the first VP.
There’s been allegations that Jordaan was rewarded by the embattled CAF President Ahmad Ahmad because he tipped him off about a possible coup that was being plotted.
It’s been reported that Pinnick was not seeing eye to eye with Ahmad in the past few months and the Malagasy-born president didn’t hesitate to remove him from the hot seat.
Jordaan says these baseless rumours are manufactured by bitter people.
Football politics are not for the fainthearted on the African continent and in football particular, Jordaan has been disappointed on numerous occasions in the elections both for CAF and FIFA positions.
The South African Football Association (SAFA) President says unity key in turning around this trouble organization called CAF.
Some of the changes at CAF are also necessitated by the problems that the continental football body is going through which have resulted in the intervention by the world’s football mother body FIFA with the Secretary-General Fatma Samoura now having been seconded to CAF.
Jordaan was asked if this doesn’t render the CAF Executive Committee redundant.
It’s been a difficult 2019 so far for Ahmad and his executive, the Malagasy under FIFA Ethics Committee investigation, he was arrested on corruption allegation in Paris two months ago, but was released without being charged.
Jordaan has also had to answer a telling question of the state of African football leadership currently.
Meanwhile, there has been further explanation around the confusion of the appointment of the referee for the AFCON final tonight between Algeria and Senegal.
On Tuesday, the CAF twitter account tweeted that South African referee Victor Gomes will handle the final.
But things changed on Wednesday when the official designation was confirmed for this final and Cameroon’s Aliou Sadi was the official referee for the final.
Ahmad explained yesterday that is one of the reasons that they need FIFA assistance to help improve their administration. What did he mean about this…? – Report by Velile Mnyandu
