Early on Thursday morning in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) elected its next president in the shape of Bahraini royal Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa.
Sheikh Salman secured a landslide victory by seeing off competition from UAE FA chief and AFC vice-president Yousuf Alserkal and Thailand’s Worawi Makudi.
With his position at the top of Asian football secured for the next two years, who exactly is Sheikh Salman and what are the tasks he faces in office?
The soft-spoken Bahraini is a one-time accountancy drop-out who drifted between careers before finally becoming the most powerful man in Asian football. The Sheikh, 47, a staunch fan of Manchester United, tried his hand in the import-export business and even worked as a customs officer in his home country before finding his calling in sports administration.
In 1992, in his late twenties, he graduated with a degree in English literature and history from the University of Bahrain but then moved into the “family business” of construction, real estate and import-export.
Sheikh Salman also worked as a customs officer and it was not until 1998 that he joined Bahrain’s football association as vice president, reprising his involvement in a sport he played to youth team level with Riffa Club in Bahrain Division One.
He became president of Bahraini football in 2002 and made an unsuccessful bid for the AFC leadership in 2009, losing out to Qatar’s Mohamed bin Hammam.
As the head of Asian football and a member of FIFA’s powerful executive committee, Sheikh Salman gives tiny Bahrain, ranked 117 in the world, a disproportionately loud voice in the sport.
However, he has only two years until the next AFC presidential election as he is completing the term of bin Hammam, who stepped down after accusations of bribery and financial mismanagement during his time in office.
In that time Sheikh Salman, who is also Bahrain’s sports minister and vice president of its Olympic committee, will face the challenge of unifying the 46-member AFC and cleaning up its affairs and image after the bin Hammam saga.
He will also attempt to address the problem of rampant match-fixing, described as the “great evil” on Thursday by departing interim leader Zhang Jilong, after scandals in several Asian countries including China, South Korea and Singapore.
READ MORE:
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– Alserkal’s AFC presidential bid ends in crushing defeat
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