Issa Hayatou, ‘the Emperor of African Soccer,’ Dies at 77

[Pelican Press 0]

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Issa Hayatou, ‘the Emperor of ******** Soccer,’ ***** at 77

Issa Hayatou, a savvy Cameroonian deal-maker who was hailed as “the emperor of ******** soccer,” leading its confederation for nearly 30 years and raising its international profile, including helping to steer the 2010 World Cup to South *******, a first for the continent, ***** on Aug. 8 in Paris. He was 77.

His ******, in a hospital during the Olympic Games, was announced by the Confederation of ******** Football, the governing body of ******** soccer. It did not cite a cause. He had been receiving kidney dialysis treatment for several years.

When Mr. Hayatou took over the confederation in 1988 — he would remain its president until 2017 — it was “an

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that seemed far more concerned with internal power and privilege politics than the development of ******** football,” New ******** Magazine observed in 2017.

But, the magazine added, he soon “deployed his own substantial diplomatic and leadership skills and his wide contacts to move ******** soccer swiftly and surely out of the ghetto” and lead it “onto the world stage.”

Mr. Hayatou was a

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of the International Olympic Committee for 15 years, starting in 2001, and later an honorary member. He was also a vice president of FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, and was its

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from October 2015 to February 2016 following the resignation of the longstanding president Sepp Blatter amid a *********** scandal that led to the arrest of many FIFA officials.

Mr. Hayatou came from a family of authority figures. His father was a sultan in northern Cameroon, and his older brother, Sadou Hayatou, was briefly the country’s prime minister in the 1990s. As The New York Times wrote in 2017, Mr. Hayatou fit right in as “******** soccer’s apparently unassailable kingpin.”

The Times noted his “combative style,” which “served the tall, heavily-built Mr. Hayatou well in ******** soccer, where a show of strength is often a successful tactic.” Mr. Blatter once said that Mr. Hayatou “does not look like a prince, more like a king.”

At times, his combative style took a defensive posture, as Mr. Hayatou withstood multiple accusations of ***********, although he was never proved guilty of any wrongdoing.

He was celebrated for his business acumen, directing billions in revenue to ******** soccer. During his presidency of the C.A.F., its

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ballooned to roughly $130 million, from $1.25 million, according to the BBC.

Mr. Hayatou aimed to bring ******** soccer up to par with the ********* game, expanding regional club competitions as well as youth and women’s programs and doubling the number of teams in the finals of the ******* Cup of Nations, the continent’s main quadrennial soccer tournament, to 16, from 8.

During his years with FIFA, he not only fought to bring the World Cup to South *******, but also increased *******’s number of national teams in the tournament to five, from two, when the tournament expanded in 1998. That number grew to six in 2010 with South *******’s automatic inclusion as the host country.

An ardent Pan-Africanist, Mr. Hayatou evoked the specter of colonialism when decrying the drain of top talent from his continent to the richer professional clubs of Europe.

“After the flight of brains, ******* is confronted with the

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,” he once said. “The rich countries import the raw material — talent — and they often send to the continent their less valuable technicians.”

“The inequality of the exchange terms is indisputable,” he continued. “It creates a situation of dependence and the impoverishment of some clubs — and of national championships.”

Issa Hayatou was born on Aug. 9, 1946, in Garoua, then part of French Cameroon. He was a standout athlete — as a soccer player, as member of the country’s national basketball team and as a national champion in the 400-meter and 800-meter running events.

In the 1970s, he served as a physical education and sports teacher at the Lycée Général-Leclerc, a secondary school in Yaoundé, the capital, and in 1982 was named Cameroon’s national sports director.

At times, Mr. Hayatou positioned himself as a crusader in an era when international soccer was swept up in scandal. As a vice-president of FIFA in 2002, he sought to unseat Mr. Blatter, who was being battered by accusations of ******** business practices and misuse of funds.

“I knew that there were things going wrong,” Mr. Hayatou was quoted as saying in The Times. “But the scope of the revelations that have been made is extremely troubling.”

Mr. Blatter denied all allegations and was re-elected by an overwhelming majority, remaining as president for another 13 years.

Mr. Hayatou himself was in the cross hairs of various accusations of ethical breaches.

In 2021, FIFA banned him for a year, accusing him of failing his fiduciary responsibilities to the C.A.F. when he had neglected to consider a rival bid in signing a $1 billion television and marketing deal with a French media company. The Court of Arbitration for Sport, an international body based in Lausanne, Switzerland,

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the decision, citing a lack of evidence.

Mr. Hayatou, along with another ******** member of FIFA’s executive committee, was also accused of accepting $1.5 million in bribes to vote for Qatar as the World Cup host country in 2022. Mr. Hayatou denied the allegation. When pressed by a journalist on the matter, he responded: “You don’t know who I voted for. You cannot speculate on this. You aren’t even as old as my son.”

While he triumphed in the face of such accusations, some critics accused him of behaving less like a monarch than a dictator.

Mr. Hayatou faced calls for his ouster after he barred Togo’s team from the 2012 and 2014 ******* Cup of Nations, ****** that Togo had pulled out of the 2010 tournament in Angola after gunmen from a local separatist group riddled the team bus with machine-**** ***** as it crossed the border. The driver and two team officials were *******.

The ban was later overturned, but Mr. Hayatou

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. The news media, he later told New ********, “accused C.A.F. of being heartless.”

“We were accused of not protecting the team,” he said. “How could we have done that? C.A.F. has no army or police force. They were supposed to travel by air. But they traveled by road.”

Information about survivors was not immediately available.

Over the years, Mr. Hayatou expressed pride over the progress of ******** clubs at international tournaments during his tenure.

Cameroon’s team reached the

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in the 1990 World Cup; Senegal accomplished the

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in 2002. The ********* men’s squad took home the gold medal in soccer at the 1996 Olympics, with Cameroon following suit in 2000.

“As a confederation, we are

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,” Mr. Hayatou said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in the run-up to the 1994 World Cup. “There are at least 20 countries that play at a very good level — higher than teams from Asia, Oceania and Central America.”

“As far as South America is concerned,” he added, “there are only two countries, Argentina and Brazil, that are strong. The others are at the same level as those in *******.”

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#Issa #Hayatou #Emperor #******** #Soccer #*****

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