FIFA Names First Female Executive

Lydia Nsekera has become FIFA’s first female member of the world governing body’s executive committee. 

Nsekera, president of the Burundi Football Association, has been co-opted onto the executive committee and will be formally installed at the FIFA Congress in Budapest on Friday. 

Nsekera is a member of several FIFA committees – for women’s football, the women’s World Cup and the organising committee for the Olympic football tournaments.

FIFA also announced that Swiss businessman Domenico Scala is to be the independent chairman of the new audit and compliance committee. 

Scala was recommended by the Independent Governance Committee, the body set up to oversee FIFA reforms. 

FIFA also confirmed its ethics committee is being restructured with a new system involving two committees to be established – one to investigate matters and the other to adjudicate on them.

An announcement on who would lead the committees had been expected on Tuesday but one of the candidates was ill so it was deferred.

“In view of this, the executive committee decided to hold an extraordinary meeting to designate both chairmen together once the FIFA Congress has approved the relevant amendments to the FIFA Statutes, which will come into force 60 days after the Congress,” a FIFA statement said.

The meeting will take place in Zurich in the first week of July when the new Code of Ethics is adopted and both chairmen will be named.

In other matters, FIFA said its players’ insurance programme was being extended to cover the Olympic tournament.

It also named six cities to host next year’s Confederations Cup in Brazil, the warm-up tournament for the 2014 World Cup finals.

Brasilia, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Salvador have been approved as venues, but FIFA said it has contingency plans and match schedules in place based on only four or five cities being fit to host games because of continued worries over stadium rebuilding.

Kosovo also took a major step towards full membership of FIFA with other nations given approval to play friendlies against the eastern European nation.