Football
Iain Macintosh, ESPN.com writer 9y

Jerome Champagne: 'I believe we need a stronger FIFA'

FIFA presidential candidate Jerome Champagne says he will fight a clean campaign against the incumbent Sepp Blatter in this year's election.

Speaking to website The Set Pieces, Champagne insisted that he will campaign on issues and will not be drawn into smearing his opponent.

"I will not fall into this demagoguery," he said. "In 2015 we need a campaign, not on personality, but a campaign on visions. I want to campaign on visions, I want to campaign on real things."

"I believe we need a stronger FIFA. Mr Blatter has a responsibility because [the World Cup bid scandals] took place on his watch, but it is a collective responsibility of the Executive Committee and that's what I want to change. For me, FIFA is a federation of national associations, not of vague continental bureaucracies which think only of their own continental competitions.

"I think that history will say that Mr Blatter made mistakes, but that Mr Havelange and Mr Blatter did a lot of good things. Remember that when I joined FIFA in 1999, there were 121 federations that had nothing.

"Mr Blatter wanted to implement programs of development to make FIFA a form of 'Robin Hood,' to redistribute the money of football and I shared that vision, I could share it because I was continuing to implement a vision that I was striving for as an individual and a citizen.

"On the strategic issues, I don't think there is a lot of difference between me and Mr Blatter. We have of course some nuances and differences, that is normal. But personally, I believe that football needs a world governance, a strong world governance.

"I fully recognise that we have a very grave image problem. If you look at my programme I want reforms to correct this problem. We are also making clear statements on how I want to govern FIFA in terms of style in terms of ethics and in terms of transparency.

"I think it's very easy to blame one person for the responsibility of a collective group. It always easy to to join a campaign against a structure, ignoring the behaviour of the other structures. I think it's more important to explain what you want to do and that's exactly what I'm doing."

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