KUALA LUMPUR: FIFA executive committee member Mohamed Bin Hammam will be unopposed for a third and final four-year term serving as president of the Asian Football Confederation. The AFC said Monday the Qatari is the only candidate in a scheduled Jan. 6 vote at its congress in Doha. Its rules limit presidents to three terms, and 12 years, in office. The confederation also published the list of candidates competing to represent Asia on FIFA's ruling executive committee, including its most senior role as a vice president of football's world governing body. Asia's football nations will choose between the incumbent Chung Mong-Joon of South Korea and the challenger Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan. Chung has been linked with a challenge to FIFA President Sepp Blatter, whose own third term ends next year. The 34-year-old Prince Ali helped create and leads the West Asian Football Federation, which contains 13 teams including Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Qatar. FIFA executive committee terms are expiring next year for Thailand's Worawi Makudi and Japan's Junji Ogura, who is 72 and barred by AFC age rules from standing. The AFC said candidates for the four-year mandate are Makudi, current AFC vice presidents Vernon Manilal Fernando of Sri Lanka and China's Zhang Jilong, plus Kohzo Tashima of Japan. Zhang served on the 2008 Beijing Olympics organizing committee. Tashima is general secretary of Japan's football association and a member of its 2022 World Cup bidding team. Bin Hammam's FIFA executive seat is secure through 2013, after he won a bitterly fought election against Bahrain's Sheik Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa in May last year. Asia provides four members of FIFA's 24-member ruling panel, whose most important task is choosing World Cup hosts. The current FIFA executive committee will vote for the 2018 and 2022 host nations in a secret ballot on Dec. 2 in Zurich. The AFC has four contenders in the 2022 poll, with Australia, Japan, Qatar and South Korea taking on the United States. $100,000 for Togo keeper Togo goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilale will receive a donation of $100,000 from FIFA after being seriously injured during an armed attack on his team's bus before the start of the African Nations Cup in January. FIFA said in a statement on its website Monday that President Sepp Blatter had told Obilale in September that a payment of $25,000 would be made from the governing body's humanitarian fund but it had now decided to raise that sum. The 25-year-old keeper needed surgery for gunshot wounds to his back and abdomen following the attack in Angola.
