BY PLEDGING the 2006 World Cup finals to Africa, FIFA chief Joao Havelange has launched a pre emptive strike to win what promises to be a long and bitter battle for the presidency of world soccer's governing body.
Havelange told the Brazilian newspaper Jornal do Brasil in an interview that he would personally tell South African president Nelson Mandela that the World Cup would go to Africa. "To reward the progress that has been made, I will tell president Nelson Mandela on January 10th that the 2006 World Cup will be on their continent. Africa has the right to hold its first World Cup," he said.
The move will be seen in international soccer circles as part of Havelange's power struggle with UEFA president Lennart Johansson, a declared candidate for the FIFA presidency at the next elections in 1998.
The decision to award the 2006 finals will not be taken for another four years and is a matter for the whole of FIFA, not just its president. But that counts for little in the grand scheme of world soccer politics. Havelange said in 1994 that his sixth four year term as FIFA president, ending in 1998, would be his last. But his stance has changed since then and he has suggested he may well stand again.
In tactical terms, with European countries expected to line up solidly behind Johansson, Havelange would need to be able to count on votes from the African continent - and what better way to win them than by pledging the World Cup finals.
It's a gamble which could even win the day. Havelange has successfully countered challenges to his leadership before with astute ploys to disarm his rivals. He looked highly vulnerable just before the last election in 1994 when there was ill disguised irritation among many FIFA members about his autocratic style.
When UEFA considered putting up a candidate against him, Havelange pulled off a master stroke, increasing the size of the World Cup finals from 24 to 32, a classic exercise in divide and rule strategy. With the continental confederations all squabbling about who should get the extra eight berths, there was no chance of their uniting behind any rival to his presidency and so he was reelected.
This time, Havelange has clearly found the weak point in the campaign of Sweden's Johansson, a FIFA vice president. At the 1994 FIFA congress in Chicago, Africa pushed for World Cup finals to be rotated among each continent in a bid to break the traditional pattern under which Europe and America staged the event alternately.
The move was blocked by Europe and South America, but was resurrected by UEFA in their reform package last year when they tried to attract worldwide support for plans to weaken Havelange's authority. But Johansson has a problem because Germany is bidding for the 2006 finals and UEFA want the rotation to start then.
Havelange has turned the move against him by arguing the rotation principle should start after the 1998 finals, already awarded to France, which would mean Europe not staging the World Cup again until 2018.
That's a thought that UEFA could not contemplate - but it suits the rest of the world with Asia getting the 2002 event, Africa staging it in 2006 and South America and then North America having the finals in 2010 and 2014 respectively.
Johansson has shown little appetite so far for the political rough and tumble in which Havelange both revels and excels and many in FIFA circles believe the Brazilian can be ousted only by another challenger emerging from the third world. The man they are watching is African confederation president Issa Hayatou of Cameroon, but he has given no hint at all that he would be prepared to stand against Havelange.
