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.