They run the biggest sports in the world, and they don't want to leave

The new president of European football's governing body sat down in a chair in his glass-walled office in Switzerland, glanced at the sweeping view of Lake Geneva and insisted he wouldn't stay there long enough to focus on to feel his ease.

It was 2017, football was still dealing with its biggest scandal and Aleksander Ceferin, just a few months into his presidency, clearly knew he was already on the clock. The sport, he said, could no longer accept leaders who were so comfortable with the trappings of power and luxury that they used the system to keep their jobs. He wouldn't be like them, he promised.

The three-year term he was elected to, ending the term left by his disgraced predecessor, “is already one term for me,” he said. If he was lucky enough to earn the two full four-year terms allowed by the rules, fine. But that would be it. Mr. Ceferin had no interest in being president for life.

“They said, 'Why term limits? You can stay here for 20 or 30 years,” he said at the time. “I don't want to stay for twenty years.”

Less than a decade later, Mr. Ceferin may have changed his mind. At his insistence, the football body he heads, UEFA, will vote next week on a series of rule changes, including a measure that would allow Mr Ceferin to remain president of one of the world's richest sporting bodies for years to come. end date he once promised.

He isn't the only leader who was ushered in by someone else's scandal and is now trying to tighten his grip on a powerful job. A similar term extension has already been quietly approved by soccer's world governing body, FIFA, making its president, Gianni Infantino, eligible for an additional four-year term in a job that will pay him about $4.5 million in cash in 2022 and bonuses. .

At the International Olympic Committee, supporters of the term-limited president Thomas Bach recently proposed that the organization's charter be changed to allow him to stay for another four years. Mr. Bach, who has not dismissed the idea, knows these rules better than anyone: like Mr. Infantino, he is a lawyer who helped craft his organization's post-scandal reforms – including the introduction of terms – before he was elevated. to the top job.

However, sports governance experts are concerned about the trend as current leaders are tasked with steering their organizations out of a scandal-ridden past. They say that reforms such as term limits, which have emerged from these scandals, are worth protecting to prevent power from being concentrated in the hands of a small clique of executives who play popular and lucrative sports that are enjoyed by millions around the world. enjoy.

Weakening or eliminating it, the experts warned, is a step straight out of the playbook of world leaders and autocrats so powerful that they can choose to remain in control for as long as they want. “It simply says that once people are in power, they don't want to leave,” said Alex Phillips, former head of governance and compliance at UEFA.

Asked about Mr Ceferin's intentions to run again, UEFA did not provide a direct response from the president, instead suggesting a review of his recent public comments. In subsequent interviews with two British socketssettling scores with members of his government and other rivals, Mr. Ceferin was noncommittal about whether he would seek to remain in office despite his previous firm commitments.

But he said that unless UEFA's current rules were revised, “there would be no limit and I could run forever.”

Opposition to this possibility is growing. Interviews with UEFA executives, board members and employees in recent months have revealed that some of the most powerful figures within the organization have strongly objected, arguing that even a perceived weakening of deadlines is unwise. One top official has already resigned in protest. Another recently warned his colleagues, and Mr. Ceferin, that creating an all-powerful president was contrary to the spirit of the reforms implemented to prevent a repeat of past scandals.

But when UEFA's 55 national associations vote on the term limits change at Thursday's annual meeting in Paris – safely tucked away in a broader package of more anodyne changes – even Ceferin's fiercest critics expect him to get what he wants.

This, they said, is just how things work in a world where even influential critics rarely put points of principle above tens of millions of dollars in funding, committee assignments and valuable hosting duties.

As a result, they say, top executives are becoming as difficult to dethrone as their corrupt predecessors. There have been no contested presidential elections at FIFA, UEFA or any of football's other regional governing bodies – or at the IOC – since their current leaders came to power almost a decade ago.

“The longer they stay, the more powerful they become,” Mr. Phillips said, “so the more likely they are to change the rules without opposition.”

Many of them, he added, “now truly believe they are irreplaceable.”

Mr Ceferin, 56, was in many ways an accidental president of UEFA. His rise came only after a corruption scandal that exposed years of bribery, vote buying and secret deals in the football world. The case led to the ouster of some of the sport's longest-serving leaders, tearing down empires and making room for new faces. As the little-known leader of the Slovenian Football Federation, Ceferin seemed a clear break with a problematic past.

Mr. Ceferin, a black belt in karate who speaks five languages, led the organization during the coronavirus pandemic and beat back a proposal for a European super-league that posed an existential threat to UEFA's biggest moneymaker, the Champions League, the annual club competition that brings in a lot of money. in billions of dollars from sponsorships and broadcast deals. During that time, his office has allowed him to interact with world leaders and some of the sport's best-known athletes.

It's no wonder, his critics say, that he would welcome the option of staying in his $3 million-a-year job as long as the rules allow it.

Mr. Ceferin has insisted that the proposed change is little more than an adjustment to the legal language, one that will maintain the 12-year maximum for the organization's leaders but will now state that terms “initiated before July 1, 2017 or submitted will not be taken into account. bill.” Mr. Ceferin was elected in September 2016, so the revision essentially wipes away the three years he once billed as his first term, and opens the door for him to stay until at least 2031.

“The proposed amendment was not intended to extend the deadline, but aims to correct an invalid provision,” UEFA said in a statement on the amendment.

This narrow clarification was questioned by one of UEFA's most senior officials, England's David Gill, at a December board meeting in Germany. According to several attendees, Mr. Gill asked to speak after the head of UEFA's legal committee, a longtime ally of Mr. Ceferin, left the term-limit proposal out of a presentation on the main changes to the rules.

As the longest-serving official on the board, Mr Gill pointedly stated, he was the only one present with experience from the bad old days at both FIFA and UEFA. Changing the statute on term limits was not a small change, as suggested, but rather “a big change” worth discussing. Mr. Ceferin responded that the current rules were “unclear,” and told Mr. Gill that he had never discussed term limits in board meetings until after Mr. Ceferin became president.

“It's about the spirit of the rules,” Mr. Gill fired back. “You were elected before the statutes changed. You were president before the bylaws changed. And the statutes were very clear at the time that a partial term is a full term.”

Tensions exploded in public opinion in January when one of Ceferin's closest associates, former Croatian star Zvonimir Boban, resigned as UEFA director of football. Mr Boban regretted that it had been Mr Ceferin himself who had led the reforms that he would now weaken. He walked into his boss's office and resigned, he said, when it became clear that Mr. Ceferin “intends to move forward regardless of his personal ambitions.”

Like Mr. Ceferin, Mr. Infantino and Mr. Bach also enjoy a degree of control over their organizations that insulates them from challenges, said Stephen Weatherill, an expert on sports governance and a former professor of European law at the University of Oxford.

National federations, Professor Weatherill pointed out, depend on relationships with international governing bodies – and their leaders – for annual budget support, development assistance and access to hosting rights for lucrative events. A strong leader who cultivates these relationships and that sense of dependency can use the power of the incumbent to his advantage.

“Term limits ensure sports leaders don't stay in their positions for too long,” Mr Phillips said. “History has shown time and time again that the longer they stay, the more they focus on maintaining power or pursuing personal interests, rather than developing their sport.”