The new president of the Ivorian Football Federation (FIF) was officially installed on April 23, ending a 16-month phase of normalization of the country’s football governing body.
This Wednesday, when publicly donning the suit of the boss of Ivorian football, Idriss Yacine Diallo first measured the immensity of the task: “We have a lot of work ahead of us. I want to be able to count on the availability of each of you so that we can, in peace, brotherhood, mutual respect and fair play, take Ivorian football to the highest possible level,” he told the actors on the country’s football stage who came to attend the handover ceremony.
The businessman, just after his victory at the expense of the legend Didier Drogba, reached out to all his one day opponents to restore the image of Ivorian soccer that unites them above all.
“It is not the individuals (that are important). It is the football of our nation. We must therefore put ourselves at its service. I am now a humble servant as president of the Federation,” Idriss Yacine Diallo said.
In June, an extraordinary General Assembly to install the Independent Electoral Commission, another ordinary one to rule on the accounts of 2021 and an extraordinary General Assembly to make changes to the statutes are planned.
Under his presidency, Diallo plans to increase the number of members of the Federation’s Executive Committee from 20 to 25 and to increase the number of clubs in League 1 (from 14 to 16 teams) and D3 (from 38 to 40).
Reporting on the finances, Mariam Dao Gabala, the president of the Normalization Committee of FIF, said that the debt after an audit is 1.6 billion CFA francs. In detail, she said that this overall amount is composed of money owed to suppliers and tax and social debts.
Currently, there are 140 million CFA francs in the accounts of the Ivorian Football Federation, according to Mariam Dao Gabala. Idriss Yacine Diallo was elected in the second round of voting with 63 votes against 61 for Sory Diabate. Both of them know well the ins and outs of Ivorian football for having been part of the leaders of the Federation in the past.
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