Madagascar Football Association chief Ahmad has been elected Confederation of African Football president, ending Issa Hayatou’s 29-year reign.<\/p>\n
Ahmad won 34 of the 54 votes in the election, which was held in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa today.<\/p>\n
The result means a change in leadership for the first time since Cameroonian Hayatou took charge in 1988.<\/p>\n
Ahmad, who appeared very emotional, becomes only the seventh Caf president in the body’s 60-year history.<\/p>\n
The result was greeted by cheers at the Caf congress as Ahmad was carried on the shoulders of jubilant supporters to the podium after the result was announced.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Hayatou was led from the auditorium by aides but he told reporters as he departed: “It is not that bad.”<\/p>\n
The 57-year-old Ahmad, who goes by a single name, said: “When you try to do something, you mean that you can do it. If I can’t do it, I never stand.<\/p>\n
“This is sweet victory. When you work hard for years and months and you succeed, that is great.”<\/p>\n
Ahmad, who became Madagascar FA chief in 2003, takes over as Caf president on an initial four-year term, and has promised to modernise the body and make it more transparent.<\/p>\n
His first job, he said earlier on Thursday, would be to introduce a new code of ethics and he has also pledged to extend ethics checks on African football officials.<\/p>\n
The departure of Hayatou is a huge change for African football and the 70-year-old will also lose his Fifa position and his place on the ruling council of world football’s governing body.<\/p>\n
He had been challenged for the Caf presidency only twice before and both times won with landslide victories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Madagascar Football Association chief Ahmad has been elected Confederation of African Football president, ending Issa Hayatou’s 29-year reign. Ahmad won 34 of the 54 votes in the election, which was held in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa today. The result means a change in leadership for the first time since Cameroonian Hayatou took charge in 1988. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42644,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42642\/revisions\/42644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}