New AFC President sets about reform as battle for change looms

A Singapore-based sports marketing company is at the centre of a battle for the future of reform within Asian football just days after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) elected a new head to complete his term.

The newly elected president, Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the President of the Bahrain Football Association, has little time to implement promised reforms aimed at ensuring transparency, accountability and good governance within the AFC.

With less than two years before regularly scheduled presidential elections, Sheikh Salman has inherited an organisation that has yet to prove its commitment to change.

A source close to the AFC explained "it's a tough job. There is a lot of baggage but he has got to do it. It has to be transparency in deeds, not in words. Anything that is not transparent has to be implemented. Otherwise, he won't make it in 2015."

The source was referring to the 2015 election when many expect a strong East Asian candidate to compete with hopefuls from the Middle East who dominated this week's poll.

The difficulties Sheikh Salman, who is supported by world football governing body FIFA President Sepp Blatter, faces were evident at last week's AFC Congress. The Congress defeated a number of motions that would have obstructed reform and limited an evaluation of the group's past financial and commercial management.

The defeat of the motions apparently prompted Seamus O'Brien, the founder and Chief Executive of Singapore-based World Sport Group (WSG), whose eight-year, $1 billion commercial rights agreement with the AFC is at the centre of the group's evaluation from the era of now-disgraced former AFC Mohammed Bin Hammam, to walk out of the Congress.

While pledging to work with WSG "towards enhancing marketing opportunities and develop the AFC brand further through this association," Sheikh Salman also promised to report by the time FIFA holds its congress at the end of May on the status of the company's agreement with the AFC.

Sources close to the AFC said that the litmus test of Sheikh Salman's resolve would be whether he acts on the recommendations of an internal audit conducted last year by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which include seeking legal counsel to ascertain whether the AFC can bring civil or criminal charges against. Bin Hammam and whether it can renegotiate or cancel its controversial agreement with WSG.

WSG last year initiated legal proceedings against this reporter in a bid to gain disclosure of sources.

The PwC report charged that Bin Hammam had used an AFC sundry account as his personal account and raised questions about the negotiation and terms of the WSG contract. Mr. Bin Hammam was last year banned for life from involvement in soccer by FIFA on charges of multiple conflicts of interest that contradicted the group's code of ethics.

In a further disclosure of his plans, Sheikh Salman told Reuters that he would make creation of an AFC ethics committee a priority, stating "if there are any wrongdoings by some, there has to be a tool to have a watchdog on everybody including the president."

Beyond obstacles likely to be put up by associates of Bin Hammam within the AFC, Sheikh Salman will have to operate in an environment in which resistance to reform appears to be growing. In a statement that took many by surprise, Blatter declared at the Congress in Kuala Lumpur, "this is the last term, not of office, but of reform."

The FIFA President appeared to be countering expectations that he would step down when his term ends in 2015 and reinforced doubts about his sincerity about reform despite the fact that more than a quarter of his executive committee as well as FIFA's honorary president have been forced to resign or has been suspended because of allegations of wrong doing and corruption.

A recent study based on comparison to best practices established by the International Red Cros

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