The highly anticipated FIFA presidential elections took place on Friday and in a somewhat surprising vote, the 207 members of the football governing body chose Gianni Infantino, the Swiss-Italian Secretary of the European Confederation over the odds-on favorite, the Bahraini head of Asian Football Confederation (AFC), Sheikh Salman Al-Khalifa. 

The first surprise of the evening came when Tokyo Sexwale, the South African candidate who is a businessman, politician, anti-apartheid activist and was a prisoner on Robben Island alongside Nelson Mandela pulled out of the race just minutes before the first round of balloting started. That cleared the way for the African members (54) to vote for Sheikh Salman. And with 44 Asian members on hand (Kuwait and Indonesia were barred due to violations), Sheikh Salman was looking at an easy 104-vote majority.

But when the first round of ballots was counted, Infantino received 88 votes ahead of Salman’s 85, with the other 34 votes going to the other 2 candidates. Infantino looked pleasantly surprised while Salman looked dejected. It turned out that Salman did not receive the pledged votes of many African and Asian members, including Iran.

But why wouldn’t Iran vote for Sheikh Salman who was projected by ESPN and Vegas bookies to win it all, and after they had pledged their support for him a few weeks earlier?

Well, it all goes back to the aftermath of the Regime mob attacks on the Saudi Embassy and Consulate in early January. After the attacks and the suspension of the relations between the 2 countries, Saudi football teams demanded that AFC place the Iranian clubs on the eastern bracket of the Asian Champions League and threatened that they will not travel to Iran and will not allow Iranian teams to come to Saudi Arabia. They then took the matter to AFC and asked for Salman’s support. But Salman did not reject their request and did not close the door on moving the Iran-Saudi club matches to a third country, and instead, he delayed the decision until after the FIFA elections of last Friday. He also did something unusual. He changed the entire schedule of the Asian Champions League such that the home-and away games between the 3 Iranian and the 3 Saudi teams to be played on the last days of the group stage, in late April and early May.

It’s not clear whether Salman was going to side with the Saudis or assuming that he would become FIFA president, he would just pass the buck to the next AFC president. Either way, it became clear to the Iranian Federation that they did not have Salman’s support and politics was getting into the sports. So they threatened to take the matter to FIFA. And, a couple of weeks ago, they invited Infantino to Tehran and pledged their support to him.

In the 2nd round of balloting on Friday, Infantino received a total of 115 votes compared to Salman’s 88 and became the new FIFA president. Now Iranian football has a friend in FIFA and a wounded enemy in AFC and with the upcoming Asian Champions League and 2018 World Cup Qualifiers things will get a lot messier.

Iran’s football head, the “Smiling” Kafashian must feel like a king-maker now. If he and a couple of other people had voted for Sheikh Salman instead of Gianni Infantino, the Sheikh would have won the first round of voting, and with the wind behind his back, would have been FIFA’s president today. But once again, the Regime kissed the European hands while antagonizing its neighbors.

Rouhani called the Regime elections on Friday, the “2nd Barjaam!” Kafashian just might as well call the FIFA elections on the same day, the “3rd Barjaam!”