FIFA Decides: Rating the Presidential Candidate Speeches

With FIFA delegates currently voting at the organisation's Congress in Zurich, we're close to finding out who will be the first president of the post-Blatter era. There have been some clues: over the past week, many members of the electorate announced the candidates they intended to vote for. The US, for example, is backing Prince Ali. Judging by these pre-election announcements, Sheikh Salman is the clear favourite.

Nevertheless, the candidates were given time this morning to address the assembled FIFA congress. We've ranked each candidate below on how positive we think their presidency will be according to the substance of their speeches.

Ali was first up. He didn't exactly build a strong case during his time on stage, making a lot of vague promises like "steering FIFA toward stability and normality while continuing to expand the great game of football across the globe."

Although he was short on specifics he did end well, playing a strong outsider card: "I'm not here to champion the needs of one region over another, nor will I subvert the needs of developing FAs in favour of those that are more established. I am one of you. Together we can make history by electing the first FIFA President who comes directly from a FIFA member association."

If Ali presented himself as a reformer and FIFA outsider, Salman did the opposite, playing up the fact that everybody already knew him, and that he had experience as President of the Asian Football Federation. Salman essentially promised to maintain the status quo. He said he wanted to shrink FIFA, "bringing down the number of the committees from 26 to nine." It's interesting, because his remarks came about an hour after FIFA unveiled and then voted to accept a number of reforms, which included adding some committees and making others bigger.

Salman also vowed to focus on FIFA's smaller countries, an appeal right out of Blatter's playbook. All FIFA countries have the same number of votes, and Blatter secured his power base by playing to the numerous smaller nations rather than a few big fish.

Salman is probably the worst candidate for FIFA but he's the bookies favourite, and his speech probably was exactly what much of the FIFA electorate hoped for.

Champagne had the longest odds from bookmakers this morning, (some had him at 300 to 1) and I'm not sure he inspired the electorate enough to change that. He did say some things that sounded good from an outside perspective (that is, my perspective) such as wanting to see a national women's league in every country. He followed that up by playing to the FIFA loyalists, reminding the Congress that he consistently "showed fidelity to FIFA," and that he "never attacked its leaders." Not sure that's a good thing, Jerome.

The last two candidates to take the stage were the most entertaining. Infantino spoke, by my count, six different languages as he addressed the congress, often switching mid-sentence. While impressive, it was a live interpreter's nightmare. Infantino's language skills have already won him some votes: the Uruguayans announced yesterday that they'd vote for him because he spoke their language. In terms of substance, Infantino had one of the best proposals of the morning: to reinvest 25 percent of FIFA's revenue into football development.

Infantino has a point here. FIFA redistributes far lower percentage of revenue back to FAs relative to UEFA.https://t.co/ZL8UT3hx7V
— Gabriele Marcotti (@Marcotti) February 26, 2016

Comfortably the most charismatic candidate, Sexwale took the stage with an ease nobody else possessed, and presented 11 ideas that he arranged into a starting lineup – a 4-4-2.

A lot of his proposals were good. He suggested FIFA needed a permanent anti-racism body and vowed to fight child trafficking in football. However, he also said there would be "no football without sponsors" which is observably false for those of us who have ever played in, say, a park.

Most bizarrely, early in his speech he riffed about how people had asked him to pull out of the race, saying that he was an "old soldier, I die with my boots on," yet he ended his speech by doing just that: withdrawing his candidacy. It was fun while it lasted, Tokyo.