Renewed hope for FFA congress consensus
Aug 9, 2017 - 5:49 AM Behind-the-scenes meetings have given stakeholders renewed hope of resolving Australian football's political deadlock before FIFA leaves town.FIFA has begun crunch talks in Sydney to determine the domestic game's future, forced to intervene after its demand for an expanded Football Federation Australia congress led to a toxic impasse with the sport's factions.
But the parties, until now as deeply set in their positions as FFA, have used the opportunity to try to find some middle ground on the make-up of the new congress.
It's understood that as FIFA's three-man delegation sat down on Wednesday morning with chairman Steven Lowy and chief executive David Gallop at FFA headquarters, A-League clubs were in a hotel over the road in discussions with the players' union, state member federations and NPL clubs.
The frenetic talks are an attempt to strike an agreement before Thursday's vital joint meeting between FFA and FIFA, represented in Australia by former Georgian Football Federation president Nodar Akhalkatsi, AFC official Ravi Kumar and FIFA lawyer Rolf Tanner.
The A-League clubs, operating collectively under the Australian Professional Football Clubs Association, are united with Professional Footballers Australia in seeking more say on the professional game.
This bloc's steepest challenge has been converting eight of the nine state federations.
All except the largest, Football NSW, supported FFA's rejected proposal of a 13-seat congress, featuring nine votes for the state federations, three for the clubs and one for the players.
It's understood some might have wavered from that stance, which FIFA deemed not sufficiently democratic.
It remains to be seen whether this changes again after the state associations, clubs and Professional Footballers Australia have their individual meetings on Wednesday afternoon with FIFA.
The pressure is on FFA to reach consensus among its stakeholders on a more-representative congress by November 30 or face its board being overthrown by a so-called normalisation committee.
Frustrating some parties is their perception that Lowy and Gallop have not been so much facilitating the process as lobbying to retain power.
One representative felt the protracted affair had been "shambolically managed" by FFA.
FFA insists it has been acting in the best interests of the sport, including grassroots and national teams.
The FIFA/AFC delegation is due to leave after Thursday's all-day meeting, at which point they will report back to FIFA's member associations committee.
Source: AAP
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