ROME (Ekstra Bladet): There are many ways to campaign on. The last few days, the DBU chairman Jesper Møller done it the cool way at the top of the Monte Mario with a spectacular view of the eternal city.
On the hilltop we find the Rome Cavalieri Hotel, which is part of the Waldorf Astoria chain. Here out of season you can get an accommodation in a double room for 3000 crowns. But then there is also access to four swimming pools and a spa for every taste. In the hotel there is room for the La Pergola, Rome’s only three-star Michelin restaurant.
For the art lover, it can be mentioned that the Rome Cavalieri has the largest privately owned art collection, as any hotel around the world can offer. Here is highlighted Andy warhol’s dollarserie.
this week, UEFA has basically put himself on the whole of the hotel. Europe’s fodboldledere meet for the congress of tomorrow, where the big number will be the election of members to the executive committee. DBU’s president is among the nine people, who are fighting for seven seats in Europe’s most powerful fodboldforsamling.
Extra Bladet met Jesper Møller in the glorious sunshine and 14 degree heat on the hotel’s terrace. Over two excellent pitchers of coffee told the DBU-chairman of its election campaign, which so far has taken him to over Marrakech, in Morocco, to the Hungarian Budapest and now in Rome, where he at the fashionable hotel keeps the meetings under four eyes with a number of the 55 fodboldpræsidenter, which has the right to vote at Thursday’s congress.
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Room with a view of the eternal city. 3000 for a night in the off-season. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix.
Jesper Møller has particularly taken on themes such as openness and transparency in all processes, including in the cash flows. We’ve taken him at his word.
– How has your campaign gone?
– It must have gone ok. It is a short campaign, for there has in fact only been december and January. It has been hard to travel around and visit all the presidents, but in January there was a FIFA meeting in Morocco, and here was 15 from UEFA to the present. In Hungary, there was also assembled a larger group. But I know many of them well in advance, and the new I’ll try to talk with here at the hotel before the congress. I have agreed 10 meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday.
the User you still have the brown envelopes?
– No, it makes you good enough not to.
– It has never been your style?
– No, and I give not gifts.
– Is there someone who does it?
– There is no one who gives brown envelopes. Someone gives gifts, but it is choked violently down. It is typically a pen or a book. Five years ago it was different, but now it is quite yt. The only thing I have given them, is my pamphlet.
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Jesper Møller is not using brown envelopes his election campaign. Photo: Lars Poulsen.
– What do your feel you? How many will vote for you?
– somewhere between 15 and 35.
– And what is to be chosen?
28. There is not a single, who has said he will not vote for me. So if I have to go out from the signals, I get 55 votes, but that’s how it goes, of course not. I’m lucky, I get 35.
– Why is it important for you to get in the executive committee?
– I was wronged and angry after the scenario we had in 2014 and 2015 about Platini and Blatter and their donations. It was not in order, and the objection to the exclusion of I, as one of the few. And now, when I will be invited to make up, I can’t allow myself to say no. When one criticizes, one must also assume a responsibility.
– What you get of money if you get selected?
– equivalent to 1.2 million Danish kroner per year.
– What should happen with them?
– I must not have full pay in both the DBU and UEFA. It is my personal opinion. But I will not begin to distribute the money before I have to possibly be chosen. Where appropriate, it will be something, as a committee of the DBU must look at.
– What do you get in the DBU?
– It is good 850.000 dollars.
– Overall, two million dollars?
– Yes, but I will not to get, if I should decide for themselves, says Jesper Møller.
PSG-owner can trigger the trouble.
If Jesper Møller will be elected to UEFA’s executive committee, he in all probability to sit together with one of the most controversial people in the international soccer.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi from Qatar. He is best friend with the country’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, as he plays tennis with. Al-Khelaifi is the president of the Qatar Sportsinvesteringsfond, which was behind the acquisition of the French PSG. Here, Al-Khelaifi used tremendously a lot of money on spillerindkøb.
Al-Khelaifi is also at the forefront of the Qatar-owned sports channel BeIN Sports, which in a big way has bought the TV rights to the UEFA shop, uefa Champions League. He is, in his capacity as the PSG-president, the board of directors of the association of european clubs (ECA).
In UEFA’s most recent congress it was decided that the ECA has the right to appoint two persons to the UEFA executive committee. They went in the first place to Juventusejeren, Andrea Agnelli, and the executive director of Arsenal Ivan Gazidis.
But since Gazidis has since switched to AC Milan, and then Italy can not have two seats, the ECA decided to appoint Al-Khelaifi for the vacant place in the UEFA.
The only ones who are protesting, is the president of the Spanish league, Javier Tebas. He points out that it is contrary to the ethical rules that Al-Khelaifi, who is storindkøber of rights from UEFA, at the same time, sit in the governing body.
another thing is that UEFA are investigating whether the PSG has violated UEFA’s rules on financial fair play, when the club, for the astronomical amount of money, bought players like Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.
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Al-Khelaifi, seen here with Neymar, can be a problem for UEFA. PR-photo.
UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, has made great efforts to make the organization transparent. He has cleared up after Michel Platini and other similar types, who ran after the money and so big on morals and ethics.
Therefore looks like Nasser Al-Khelaifi exactly a man, as UEFA do not need.
Jesper Møller can see that there here is a challenge.
– But now Al-Khelaifi first be approved at the congress. There will surely come a discussion on the disqualification or not. If you believe there is talk about the general incapacity, he can not sit in the executive committee, he says.
– if you Think that ECA should have chosen a different candidate?
I shall not mix myself in.
– But do you understand the discussion about his candidacy?
– Yes, I can understand that with the things we have been through. And I am also sure that Ceferin would have been the here mention, in addition, says Jesper Møller.
