Issa Hayatou: A profile of FIFA's acting president

08 October 2015 14:31

Issa Hayatou has been appointed as the acting president of FIFA, but his appointment will do little to improve the organisation's credibility after the provisional suspension of president Sepp Blatter.

The 69-year-old from Cameroon is the president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), has been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 2001 and has stepped up to the acting presidency of FIFA by virtue of his standing as the body's most senior vice-president.

However, Hayatou was himself reprimanded by the IOC over payments he accepted from marketing firm ISL in the mid-1990s.

Born on August 9, 1946, Hayatou was a national athletics champion over 400 and 800 metres and also played basketball at national level. He worked as a teacher before moving into sports administration.

He has been president of CAF since 1988 and has been a member of FIFA's all-powerful executive committee from 1990. In 2002 he ran against Blatter for the FIFA presidency, but since losing out has been regarded as a loyal ally to the Swiss.

He is credited with helping increase the profile of African football and in helping to increase the African contingent at World Cup finals over his time in office. He was elected unopposed for a seventh four-year term in office in 2013 after Jacques Anouma's candidacy was deemed illegal after a change of the confederation's rules.

In 2011 Hayatou and Anouma were accused of taking a bribe of 1.5million US dollars to vote for Qatar's 2022 World Cup bid at a Culture, Media and Sport select committee hearing of British MPs, based on evidence submitted to the hearing by the Sunday Times.

He has brought in several rule changes at CAF to consolidate his power and deter potential opponents - the rules now state that candidates for its presidency can only come from the ranks of its own executive committee, a tightly-knit club controlled by Hayatou. He also engineered the removal on an age limit of 70 on CAF officials - his current mandate term ends in 2017 and he wants at least four more years until 2021, when he turns 75.

Hayatou and CAF were widely condemned in January 2010 for banning Togo from two future African Nations Cup competitions after the team withdrew from that year's tournament in Angola following a gun attack on the team bus, in which three people were killed. The ban was lifted in May 2010 by the CAF executive committee.

CAF also banned Morocco from two future tournaments after they pulled out as hosts for the 2015 Nations Cup. Morocco had wanted the tournament to be postponed following the outbreak of the Ebola crisis.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ruling in April.

Source: PA