Ahmad Defeats Hayatou To Become New CAF President

Danny Jordaan won his quest for a place on the Confederation of African Football’s (Caf) executive committee when he emerged as one of the kingmakers with a convincing victory yesterday on a day of upset results at the elections in Addis Ababa.

Now Hayatou has lost his position with CAF, too. But first he followed an athletic career, as he worked as physical education and sports teacher during the seventies.

On the eve of the vote, it was announced that Hayatou and Caf secretary-general Hicham El-Amrani could face criminal charges in Egypt over deals secured for African football marketing and media rights between 2008 and 2028.

CAF’s 53 member associations (minus Eritrea, which could not vote as they have not competed in recent competitions) finally made the decision on who would carry the confederation forward.

The 34-20 vote was a decisive rejection of the 70-year-old incumbent from Cameroon, who had been seeking an eighth term to take his leadership of the African game into a fourth decade.

“Now that the elections are over, everyone should be focusing on a bright future for African football”, he told reporters at the end of the Congress.

While not yet a member of Federation Internationale de Football Association – and therefore ineligible to enter the World Cup – Zanzibar’s governing body will have a vote in CAF debates.

However, his tenure had its share of controversies, scandals and low points, especially that he faced allegations of corruption and bribery.

“The old CAF leaders, using their influence in the committee that controls referees on the continent, went for the referee who is known as TP Mazembe’s “Mr Fix-It”, Bernard Camille of Seychelles, to handle Sunday’s match between CAPS United and the Congolese giants” it further claimed.

“You know Hayatou was too old to play with the youngsters around him, whether it is Federation Internationale de Football Association president Gianni Infantino who is young, Phillip Chiyangwa is young, Ahmad is young, and he is an old man”, Chiyangwa tells KickOff.com from Ethiopia.

The Nigeria football chief had triggered the Infantino involvement when he brought him to Nigeria alongside African FA chairmen in a move that started the eventual fall of Hayatou.