DOHA: Mohamed Bin Hammam won a new four-year term as Asian Football Confederation president Thursday and vowed to take the game to a new level. The Qatari, who has been in the job since 2002, was elected unopposed until 2015 at the AFC Congress in Doha ahead of the Asian Cup which kicks off Friday. Jordan's Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein was also elected as a FIFA Vice President Thursday, beating incumbent Chung Mong-joon in an election that further bolsters the power of football in the region. Ali, 35, beat Chung by 25 votes to 20. Touted as a potential successor to Sepp Blatter as head of FIFA, Bin Hammam has been instrumental in changing the face of Asian football. The 61-year-old FIFA executive committee member is seen as a modernizer who has overseen the launch of the AFC Champions League and the admission of Australia into the confederation. His dream is to see leagues in Asia run as professionally as their European counterparts. “My strong belief in the passion for football in Asia and the potential of Asian football made me announce my desire to lead this Confederation more than eight years ago,” he said. “Asia, with its huge population, has the most talents, and I believed that the world has yet to feel the vibration of Asian football.” He cited his priorities moving forward as injecting more quality into AFC projects while expanding the base of football participation and continuing the push to professionalize the game. FIFA above ‘envy and jealousy' FIFA president Sepp Blatter brushed aside what he called the “envy and jealousy” of world soccer's governing body's critics Thursday after a typically roller-coaster few weeks of controversy. Blatter, who is standing for a fourth term as president in May, has been under pressure following the simultaneous voting for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups – won by Russia and Qatar respectively – and the allegations of corruption that dogged the process. “In 2010 we had some milestones in the history of football, starting with the first World Cup on the African continent, and what a success (that was),” he said in his address. “Then we had the decision of FIFA's executive committee to go to new destinations in 2018 and 2022. All this has created a lot of envy and jealousy in our world because you cannot satisfy everybody.”
