AFC delegates reject Japan candidate

AFC delegates reject Japan candidate

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Delegates at the Asian Football
Confederation (AFC) dealt a humiliating blow to Japan's high-
profile 2002 World Cup bid yesterday, when they rejected the
country's top official Tadao Murata in two high-profile
elections.

Murata, secretary general of Japan's 2002 bidding committee,
polled only two out of 32 votes in the bitter battle for FIFA's
vice-presidency which was won by his arch-rival South Korean
Chung Moon-Jung with 11 votes.

Murata, who used English soccer legend Bobby Charlton and free
bottles of 12-year-old malt whisky as Campaign tools, was further
stunned when he again placed last in polling for his old seat as
one of the AFC's four vice-presidents.

"I learned a lot of things today," said Murata after a roller-
coaster day of elections which saw only one incumbent AFC
official out of six secure re-election.

Murata's defeat means Japan, one of Asia's soccer powerhouses
after the launch of the popular J-League last year, has no senior
official in the AFC for the first time since Murata first became
AFC vice-president in 1964.

Commenting on a dramatic day in which 36 candidates were
jostling for 17 elected positions, FIFA General Secretary Sepp
Blatter said, "I just felt it from the very moment I arrived here
that this was going to be an exciting election.

"It is good from time to time to have elections like this when
there are large changes of people," said Blatter, who was chief
guest at the Congress along with FIFA president Joao Havelange.

The elections started with shouts and scuffles after AFC
general-secretary Peter Velappan corrected a mistake by one of
the vote scrutineers, which originally placed Chung equal with
Kuwaiti Sheikh Ahmad Fahad on 11 votes each.

The corrected result showed Chung winning with 11 votes, Fahad
with 10, Qatar's Mohammed bin Hammam on eight and Murata on two,
less than 10 percent of the vote.

"The Asian Football Confederation is one of the most important
confederations in the world,"said Chung at a champagne victory
celebration, where he was hugged by Fahad, president of the
Olympic Council of Asia.

"I am a Korean and I am a human being but I will try my utmost
to be impartial as a FIFA officer, to work with the whole of Asia
for the whole of Asia," said Chung, moving quickly to head off
criticism that his election was designed only to win a FIFA
platform for South Korea's 2002 bid.

The AFC's new president, Sultan Ahmad Shah of Malaysia, who
won unopposed after former president Tan Sri Haji Hamzah resigned
Tuesday on health grounds, promised a short period of
consolidation before the future of Asian football could be mapped
out.

"Most of the members I will have working with me are new, so
we have to consolidate the new blood to make up the team that
will deliver our vision for the future of Asian football," said
Shah, a former king of Malaysia.

There was a measure of good news for both Japan and South
Korea's World Cup campaigns when Blatter told a Press conference
yesterday that FIFA definitely wanted to stage the 2002 World Cup
in Asia.