New initiative calls for FIFA reform
FIFA critics gather at a summit to discuss how to achieve change in the international football body. The summit is organised by ‘New FIFA Now’; a campaign initiated by UK MP Damian Collins.
On 21 January 2015, at a summit arranged by a group called 'New FIFA Now', a range of politicians, football professionals, fan group representatives and sports policy experts will get together to discuss how to change the way football’s governing body is run.
According to the initiator behind 'New FIFA Now', Damian Collins, a Conservative MP in the UK Parliament, this meeting will focus not on what is wrong in FIFA, but how it can be changed.
“We don’t intend to talk about what is wrong with FIFA, as we all know what’s wrong,” says Collins in a press release. “The experience since the Presidential election in 2011 – when we were promised things would change – shows that FIFA is incapable of reforming itself. But we also know that FIFA’s problems go much further back than that.”
The 'New FIFA Now' campaign calls for governments to demand a time-limited administration to develop renewed policies and governance procedures and also urges sponsors and broadcasters to either support this action or to withdraw their funding.
“It is real change for a new style of organisation that is befitting of FIFA’s position overseeing the biggest sport in the world,” Collins said in the press release. “We want to see football governed by people who make decisions and take action in a transparent manner, and who are held accountable in the best interests of the sport and civil society.”
The summit will see the presence of FIFA presidential candidate Jérôme Champagne, FIFA whistleblower Bonita Mersiades, Jaime Fuller, chairman of SKINS and an advocate for better ethics in sport, former FIFA official Harold Mayne-Nicholls and Jens Sejer Andersen, international director in Play the Game, among others.
“The people who issued the invitation constitute a small, but quite diverse group of politicians, football leaders and officials. They are known as competent, honest and strongly committed to better football governance, so I look much forward to hearing more about their proposals,” says Sejer Andersen about his participation in the summit next week.
Anyone wishing to support the campaign can do so by signing a petition launched on the campaign's website and the summit is open to media upon registration.