Hayatou seeks 4 more years

Issa Hayatou Cairo - Arabstoday Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Issa Hayatou received key pledges of support on Friday as he sought another four years at the helm of African football to extend his tenure at the top to almost 30 years. Hayatou, reprimanded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in December for receiving payments from a defunct firm at the heart of a corruption affair, has presided over African soccer since 1988 and wants another four-year term at the 2013 elections. Several delegates from CAF’s regional associations and individual countries announced at African football’s congress their intentions to again back the 65-year-old Cameroonian. Hayatou told a news conference he would be pleased to stand. “I will accept if my faculties allow me. If God permits me four more years then I will rest,” he said on Friday, indicating a possible retirement in 2017, when he will be 71. A motion indirectly criticising the IOC censure was passed at the congress. “The general assembly denounces the strategy by which the African sports movement and its officials are used as scapegoats by those who seek by all means to cover their tracks. “We note the president of CAF has in the past been the target of an unpleasant campaign,” it said, without further explanation. Hayatou, an IOC member, told the Olympic body’s ethics commission he had received payments from FIFA’s former marketing agency International Sport and Leisure (ISL) in 1995. The IOC said such an action constituted a conflict of interest and reprimanded him. Hayatou said he had received 100,000 French francs from ISL in 1995 for the 40th anniversary of CAF. ISL, the former marketing partner of FIFA and CAF, went bankrupt in 2001 with debts of about $300 million.