Australia in the dark over FIFA takeover
Dec 5, 2017 - 7:17 AM Chairman Steven Lowy and his FFA board have been left to sweat on their potential dismissal, with FIFA yet to make a decision about whether it would seize control of the game in Australia.A day after FIFA's member associations committee met to discuss the issue, Football Federation Australia's top brass remained in the dark over its future.
It comes as Lowy invited back to the negotiating table the very A-League clubs he slammed as money and power hungry last week, in a bid to reopen "constructive dialogue" about a new top-flight operating model.
More than four months ago, Lowy shut down joint talks on the matter in retaliation to the clubs' threats of legal action seeking to force FFA to reveal its finances.
But on Monday, after learning of a joint 300-page document compiled by the clubs and the players' union containing their extensive draft for an independent and expanded A-League, Lowy wrote to the clubs requesting "discussions to commence as soon as possible and for the previously established working group to reconvene".
He also outlined FFA's own blueprint of some 450 pages.
The clubs deny sending their document to FIFA, as has been claimed.
They also view Lowy's supposed peace offering in the context of the game's protracted and now soured impasse, which culminated in the failure last week of the warring factions to achieve consensus on a new congress model before FIFA's November 30 deadline.
Now the game's future lies in the hands of FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who heads the seven-person panel constituting the Bureau of the Council.
It is that powerful body which has the legislative power to sack the FFA board and install a normalisation committee to sort out the code's messed-up governance.
Last night, the member associations committee was expected to pass on its recommendation to the Bureau of the Council but, as of Tuesday afternoon, FFA said it had not heard the outcome of that meeting in Zurich.
The Bureau could convene as early as this week in Abu Dhabi, where soccer's chief decision makers are gathered ahead of the Club World Cup.
However there is no set timeline and, the longer the process draws out, the more complex the conclusion is likely to be.
The Australian environment is unique to other 'normalised' member federations such as Cameroon and Argentina, in the sense FFA is abiding by Australian corporate law and the powerful Lowy family has extensive legal avenues at their fingertips and Lowy himself has not ruled out using them.
Source: AAP
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