1 minute read
Some History
1974
AL-SADOUN, ISRAEL, AND THE ASIAN FEDERATION
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AlRai
Mr. Ahmed Al Sadoun and the late Barak Al Marzouq toured 14 Asian countries within 12 days shortly before the Asian Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, scheduled for August 22, 1976. Al-Sadoun deprived them from attending the Asian Congress. He contacted the Malaysian Ambassador to Kuwait when he was the vice president of the Kuwaiti Parliament, “I invited the Malaysian Ambassador to parliament, and at the beginning of my conversation I thanked him and his country for all their noble stance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I told him that we would like him to prevent their country from allowing the Zionists from entering Malaysia to attend the Congress. The Malaysian government complied with our wishes and refused to grant him a visa.”
“After studying the Asian situation well, and how many votes we can get in the voting process to expel the Zionist entity, we set two timelines for the expulsion,” Ahmad al-Sadoun, former president of the Kuwaiti parliament and former head of the Kuwaiti Football Association. “The first opportunity will be in the meeting scheduled in Tehran in 1974, in the event that all the Arab associations joined the AFC, the second opportunity will be in the Congress of Kuala Lumpur scheduled in 1976.”
Al-Sadoun said that after the vote to expel Israel from Asia was passed in the congress, FIFA’s president was angered by their decision and threatened to boycott the AFC and suspend its activity.
Two days before the congress, a telegram from the Israeli Federation was sent to the secretary general of the AFC calling for the congress held in Kuala Lampur to be canceled as they argued their tactics were illegal because their representative was prevented from attending. They knew that Ahmad Al-Sadoun was the one who was behind it and expressed in their telegram that “Israel played football before him, and will play after him.”
Ultimately, the situation calmed and the FIFA president, João Havelange, eventually came to the realization that he was voted in as president of FIFA with the help of the Asian and African federations. “Havelange paid us back the debt of supporting him during the FIFA elections.”
