Mohamed bin Hammam has been the president of the Asian Football Confederation since 2002. He has been credited for giving Asian football a structure on its path to professionalization. The 2011 AFC Asian Cup recently held in Qatar is regarded as the most organized and successful continental championship to date.

The 61-year-old Qatari's administrative career started early. He was 24 when he became the president of local Qatari club Al Rayyan, going on to become the Qatar Football Association president in 1992 before becoming a member of the FIFA Executive Committee in 1996. Bin Hammam has also headed his country’s volleyball and tennis federations.

Bin Hammam has brought about a lot of change within Asian football over the past decade. When he took charge at the AFC in 2002 it was still nothing more than an amateur body with a base in Kuala Lumpur.

Now the AFC Champions League is a thriving continental club championship, just as the AFC Asian Cup has developed into a competitive continental championship.

Professionalization of football across Asia

Bin Hammam has also launched a program called Vision Asia to overlook the development of football and its professionalization across the continent.

He hopes to take all this to FIFA, which has 208 member nations, and give more focus on the Goal projects if he is made president. He has said he is worried about the game drifting away from its roots and base - the footballer and the fans.

He has also said that he would like to clear FIFA of corruption, as well as boost funding for development projects around the world.

Not an easy contest

If he wins, he says he will restrict the FIFA presidency to two terms. However, this might not be an easy feat. Many observers have questioned whether Mohamed bin Hammam will be able to garner enough votes to unseat Sepp Blatter to become the first FIFA president from Asia.

He is not the first to try his luck against Blatter, who has beaten Lennart Johansson (1998) and Issa Hayatou (2002) in past FIFA presidential elections.

On Thursday, the English Football Association said it would abstain from voting in the presidential election. FA chairman David Bernstein said there was a range of issues which made it "difficult to support either candidate."

Author: Arunava Chaudhuri
Editor: Anne Thomas