I'll beat Mohamed, says Sheikh Salman

The man challenging Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Hammam believes his chances of winning a crucial vote next month have improved after weeks of mud-slinging.
Sheikh Salman Ibrahim Al Khalifa, the chairman of the Bahrain football association, said he was confident of taking Mohamed's Fifa executive committee seat, which is up for grabs at the AFC Congress on May 8.

If the Qatari loses that powerful position, he has said he will step down as AFC chief despite his term running until 2011."I am confident of my ability and my chances are better than my opponent in the battle for several reasons," Sheikh Salman said."I did not prevent any of the Asian members from voting, I did not create laws to try and prevent others who have the right to vote from doing so, I did not interfere in the affairs of others.

"So let us now focus on the battle and see what we can do for Asian football." Sheikh Salman's comments came after Fifa ruled on Friday that six Asian football associations had the right to vote at the AFC's Congress despite being informed that they did not meet the conditions to do so.The nations -- Kuwait, Brunei, Laos, East Timor, Mongolia, Afghanistan -- are all expected to back Sheikh Salman, with a two-thirds majority of the AFC's 46 members needed to win the Fifa seat.In the cases of Brunei, Laos, East Timor, Mongolia and Afghanistan, the AFC's ad-hoc legal committee said they had not played enough official competitions to be able to vote, but Fifa said they had.

The Kuwaitis were told they would be excluded from voting because the AFC did not recognise the temporary committee running their football affairs. Again, Fifa disagreed."What we want is for everyone, all associations, to have their say and to express their opinions with absolute freedom," said Sheikh Salman. "We want to promote equality among member associations, transparency within the AFC organisation, with an emphasis on transparency in reporting AFC finances, and promoting unity for the development of Asian football."

Meanwhile, the Kuwait Football Association has lodged a complaint with Fifa's ethics and disciplinary committees against Mohamed and Australian broadcaster Les Murray for "spreading defamatory statements tarnishing the election process". It stems from claims that Mohamed made in an interview with Murray that the Kuwait-based Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) was offering grants to football associations in Asia to secure their votes for Sheikh Salman.Murray, who sits on Fifa's ethics committee, asked world football's governing body to investigate. The OCA angrily denied the "baseless" accusations.