They were five candidates who hoped to become FIFA president at a congress on Friday the 26 Feb, 2015.

Tokyo Sexwale, Gianni Infantino, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, and were all in contention.

The 2016 election followed a decision by Blatter to step down amid corruption allegation at the world biggest football governing body.

How the election works

Who votes

FIFA has 209 members association each with a single vote meaning that tiny associations like Sao Tome, Brunei, Andorra and Principe have the same rights as the bigger once like Italy, Brazil and Germany.

However, FIFA suspended Indonesia and Kuwait in 2015 after breaching the rules that prevents the government of a country from interfering with Football independence.

This means that only 2017 federations were eligible to vote this year represented as follows:

· Europe – 53 votes

· Africa – 54 votes

· Australia and Asia – 46 votes

· South America – 10 votes

· Oceania – 11 votes

· Central and North America – 35 votes

The voting process

Voting usually takes place in a secret ballot though most regions and countries groups usually declare who they intend to elect before the election date.

Before voting, each candidate is allowed to address the congress for 15 minutes then voting starts in the afternoon but the events are renowned for delay.

Each members is then invited to vote in alphabetic order.

In order to win, a candidate should achieve two-thirds of the total votes in the first win which is 139 out of the total 209.

If this does not happen in the first round, voting goes to the second round where for a candidate to win, he only need to get the majority votes.

If still no candidate gets the majority votes, the contestant with the least votes is eliminated and the third round is held.

This continues until there is a winner.

The timing during FIFA elections cannot be predicted because the elections is the 11 on the day’s agenda after the congress decides whether to approve the new draft statues.

Rules for standing

· As per FIFA guidelines, any candidate should have played an active role in association football; as club or league player, a confederation, or as a person responsible for administrative, technical or
medical matters in FIFA, trainer, coach, referee, committee member or board member for at least two years before his proposed candidature.

· Also the candidate should present declaration of support from not less than five FIFA’s member associations but the associations do not necessarily have to vote the candidate they backed.

· There is no age restriction to vie as the president of FIFA…