Jordaan misses out on Fifa seat

Jordaan was hoping to follow in the footsteps of Michel Platini and Franz Beckenbauer, former World Cup organisers who have moved to the top seats in football politics, but garnered less than 10 percent of the vote at the Confederation of African Football’s congress in Sudan.

Mohamed Raouraoua of Algeria finished first in a hotly contested race for a place on the all-powerful cabinet of world football with 39 votes and becomes the newest member of the 24-man FIFA committee.

The president of the Algerian Football Federation received 39 votes while Jacques Anouma of the Ivory Coast retained his seat with 35 votes, earning another four-year term.

The pair solidly beat the other candidates in a six-man race for the two of Africa’s four places in the all-powerful cabinet of world football’s governing body.

The vote flew in the face of the widespread praise Jordaan received for his organising of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, including even just minutes before the vote from CAF president Issa Hayatou in his address to the congress.

But without support from Hayatou and FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who also traveled to Khartoum for the congress, Jordaan was left floundering and even a tactical move to withdraw from a separate bid to get onto the CAF executive committee failed to win him the necessary support.

Jordaan received just 10 votes. Each of CAF’s 53 member countries voted twice, which meant he garnered less than 10 percent of the vote.

He finished behind Suketu Patel of the Seychelles, who received 12 votes but ahead of Nigerian Ibrahim Galadima, who received just five. Kalusha Bwalya of Zambia withdrew from the race in a tactical move that saw him voted instead onto the CAF executive committee, which runs the African game.

The 64-year-old Raouraoua has had two separate terms at the head of Algerian football and has also revived a regional body for North Africa.