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The vacating of office of former Fifa president Sepp Blatter and his CAF counterpart Issa Hayatou in the past few years heralded the departure of the last of the old generation of leaders in world football.
Their lust for power and authoritarian leadership styles were some of the common factors that turned Blatter’s and Hayatou’s departures into football’s most dramatic falls in the past decade.
Blatter, who resigned in June 2015, left Fifa House after a 17-year tenure dogged by corruption scandals.
Hayatou, on the other hand, did not see his fall coming when he lost the 2017 CAF election to little-known Madagascan Ahmad Ahmad, whose elevation to the top seat ended Hayatou’s 29 years in office.
As one analyst once wrote: “Sport and scandal are familiar companions. Where there is money there is greed. Where there is greed there will be cheating. Where there is power there will be temptation.”
It was ironic that Blatter, who had befriended Africa at the turn of the century, suddenly lost grip on power shortly after popping Champagne to celebrate South Africa’s successful hosting of the 2010 World Cup.
Claims of widespread corruption at Fifa led to a major inquiry by the FBI, which culminated in the infamous raid on a luxury hotel in Zürich, Switzerland, in May 2015 that led to the arrest of several Fifa executives.
They were busted on charges of “rampant, systemic and deep-rooted” corruption at the world football governing body.
The awarding of the 2010 World Cup to South Africa also came under scrutiny. Much attention was on a $10 million payment that a US indictment claimed was a bribe to secure the hosting rights for South Africa, an allegation which Safa and the national government have constantly denied.
Blatter was later implicated in corruption and his downfall was completed, and so was the toppling of his regime.
The Fifa ethics committee banned him from football for eight years in December 2015, alongside his one-time heir apparent Michel Platini.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport later reduced the suspensions – Platini’s to four years ending this year, while Blatter’s was cut to six years.
Blatter, now 83 years old, is not yet off the hook, as Fifa, under his successor Gianni Infantino, wants to recoup the more than $2 million that the former paid to Platini.
The fall of Hayatou
In 2015 Hayatou changed the rules for the age limit of CAF presidential candidacy, which previously stopped officials serving past the age of 70, to ensure that he could stand for an eighth term.
But on the afternoon of March 16 2017, inside a packed Nelson Mandela Plenery Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, African football ushered in a new dawn for the sport on the continent when the lanky veteran administrator was finally outvoted from power.
During his final days in office, Hayatou had become the butt of jokes, with videos of him dozing off during matches at Afcon tournaments being circulated on social media.
He was literally sleeping on the job and was deceived by his inner circle during his time of need, and he was probably napping when the plans of his removal were hatched.
The Malagasy Football Federation chief won 34 votes to Hayatou’s 20 to herald the beginning of a new era.
The buzzword of Ahmad’s campaign was “new dawn”. Key among his proposals was financial transparency at CAF, including the scrutiny of the controversial $1 billion television and marketing rights deal that CAF had with France-based sports and entertainment agency Lagardère Sports.
The contract, which was supposed to have run from 2017 to 2028, is currently the subject of dispute between the two parties after Ahmad’s administration scrapped it in the wake of separate judgments that the deal had breached competition rules.
While continental football enjoyed its fair share of successes under Hayatou, his legacy will remain entrenched in a leadership style that bordered on dictatorship, while his reign was also not without scandals.
There is no doubt that history will mostly remember Blatter and Hayatou as two of the game’s most immovable dictators of the past decade.
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