By Nick Mulvenney
Aug 20 (Reuters) – The Qatar Football Association has reiterated its concerns over the lack of consultation with members before the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) signed an open letter with UEFA and CONCACAF criticising FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
Infantino, who is seeking reelection next year, has faced open revolt after the letter attacked his conduct over the aborted bid to bring private investment into the World Cup and called into question his leadership.
In the third letter in a testy exchange, all of which have been seen by Reuters, QFA President Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, an Infantino loyalist, said the AFC’s response to his original complaint “raised considerably more questions than it answers”.
“The AFC reply amounts to an admission that no consultation took place, whether with the AFC executive committee, with individual member associations, or otherwise, prior to the statement being issued in their name,” Al-Thani wrote in Wednesday’s letter.
“However extensively the AFC reply addresses the substance of the FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal, FIFA’s own conduct, or the history of AFC’s public statements, none of that bears on the narrow and unanswered question of whether AFC’s membership was consulted before the statement was issued in their name.
“It was not.”
One of the main complaints levelled at Infantino over his FFE proposal was that it was developed without the consultation of the confederations and pitched directly to FIFA’s 211 member associations.
Qatar were among six members of the AFC which declared their support for Infantino early in the crisis that was triggered by the failed proposal.
For such an exchange between senior figures to be made public is highly unusual at the AFC, which usually likes to do its business behind closed doors.
In a forthright letter on Tuesday, AFC President Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa “categorically denied” the QFA’s assertion that he had exceeded his authority by signing the joint letter.
The Bahraini administrator said he had “both the authority and the responsibility to act decisively” to defend the interests of Asian football and slammed the Qataris for focusing on technicalities rather than the good of the game.
Al-Thani’s response reasserted that Sheikh Salman was not entitled to speak on behalf of the 47 member associations without their authorisation, and said any rights he had to act as president were defined by the AFC’s executive committee.
As a member of the FIFA Council, Al-Thani sits on the AFC executive committee.
Sheikh Salman had also pointed out that he and other AFC presidents had previously issued public statements on matters of significance to Asian football, including backing Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup in the face of global pressure.
“To the extent any statements were made in the past and in support of the (2022) World Cup, they were made in reflection of AFC’s own institutional interest, as an organisation, in the successful staging of a World Cup in Asia,” Al-Thani added.
“The AFC reply, unfortunately, cannot be characterized as a satisfying response to QFA’s legitimate and important questions,” he concluded.
There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the AFC on the letter.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Peter Rutherford)
