PORT LOUIS, Mauritius — FIFA introduced new integrity checks on senior officials and welcomed a woman onto its exclusive ruling board Friday, changes the much-maligned world football body said signaled it was close to completing a drawn out and often criticized path to reforming itself. “I am happy to say that FIFA has weathered the storm. We have emerged from troubled waters,” FIFA President Sepp Blatter proclaimed to delegates at the annual congress on the tropical Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. FIFA's long-serving captain said the ship had reached “transparent” waters in Mauritius after a rocky, scandal-hit few years for the powerful and 109-year-old governing body. Yet the head of the expert reform panel advising FIFA earlier told delegates it was only the beginning of the organization's attempts to modernize and that it had still had lots to do, including making the salaries and bonuses of its big earners public, and establishing age and term limits for senior officials. Swiss professor Mark Pieth said FIFA's leadership needed to show a commitment “that they really want to go down the road to reform.” Pieth said before the start of the congress that FIFA's reforms were only about halfway to completion and there were “remaining challenges.” He said the integrity checks introduced weren't as strict as they could be, and that it was “essential” that FIFA also introduces term limits on senior officials. “The logic there is to say you don't want networks and old boys groups to establish themselves over 30 years or so. That's a real issue,” Pieth said. However, the issue of term limits and age restrictions for senior officials were pushed back to next year's congress. Those reforms could affect any plans the 77-year-old Blatter may have of standing again for the leadership in 2015 — even though he has said he won't. The proposal to postpone the vote on age and term limits drew an active debate on the floor, with the Danish and German delegates reflecting UEFA's frustration that those issues wouldn't be settled despite a two-year discussion over their implementation and the importance placed on them by the expert reform panel. The proposal to shelve the issue until next year eventually passed by a vote of 123 to 16, meaning 68 of the 207 national associations voting Friday either abstained or did not register valid votes. The issue of whether to make the salaries for Blatter and other officials public also wasn't dealt with in Mauritius. “We're not making much headway” on that transparency issue, Pieth said. The new centralized integrity checks will be made for officials standing for the presidency and some committees. But members of the top executive committee that are elected by their continental confederations will be vetted at confederation level, and not centrally. Also, Pieth's recommendation that those confederation checks be scrutinized by independent auditing firms was not adopted. Around a third of FIFA's powerful executive committee either left their posts or were suspended for ethics violations over the last two years, and FIFA's honorary president Joao Havelange recently resigned after it was found he took bribes in the 1990s. In a swipe at some of Pieth's criticism, FIFA executive committee member Theo Zwanziger of Germany described the insistence on even stricter integrity checks as “absurd,” highlighting the uneasy relationship between FIFA and its reform advisers over the past few months. “We must have the necessary trust in members in football,” Zwanziger said. “If we start with mistrust from the top down, then this sport is no longer what it was.” In one modernizing move, Lydia Nsekera of Burundi was voted onto the executive committee as its first female full-time member on a four-year term, while two other women were co-opted onto the executive for a year. FIFA also approved stricter punishments for clubs if their players, officials or fans are found guilty of racist abuse, agreeing with the recommendations of an anti-racism task force set up after high-profile recent problems in Italy when black players were subjected to abusive chants from supporters. Clubs may now have points deducted or be relegated or expelled from a tournament if guilty of serious or repeat racist offenses. The new resolution, which was passed with a 99-percent majority, also says a player guilty of racism in any game should be banned for five matches. The mandatory five-game suspension previously applied just to FIFA internationals. “We are doing something now,” Blatter said following the vote, adding it must have been a “mistake” that it wasn't unanimous. — AP
