President of the Burundi Football Association, Lydia Nsekera, became the first woman to be co-opted onto the executive committee of FIFA on Tuesday. She is a member of the Woman’s Football and the Woman’s World Cup committees and on the organizing committee of the Olympic Football Tournament. She has been on the International Olympic Committee since 2009.
Nsekera, 45, will take her place as a co-opted executive committee member at the 62nd FIFA Congress this week and the formal election of a woman onto the committee will take place at the FIFA Congress next year. Meanwhile FIFA is going ahead with its’ restructure of the ethics committee. There will actually be two committees now, one to investigate matters and another to adjudicate.
Due to the illness of one of the candidates for heading the committee, the announcement of who would chair them has been postponed. An extraordinary meeting will be held in Zurich in July after the FIFA Congress has approved amendments to the Statutes. Then they will appoint both chairs. The new Statutes will come into force 6o days after Congress.
Swiss-Italian businessman, Dominic Scala, did not have to wait for his appointment when he was made independent chairman of the Audit and Compliance Committee. This will be made official at Congress. Other countries have been given the go ahead to play friendlies against Kosovo, taking them a step nearer full FIFA membership.
Elsewhere, FIFA named the six cities to host the Confederations Cup next year in Brazil. There are concerns over stadium building projects so there are contingency plans in place for only four or five cities being ready. The six cities are Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Fortaleza, Salvador, Recife and Belo Horizonte. FIFA also said its insurance programme was being extended to cover players at the Olympics.