{"id":12738,"date":"2012-02-12T08:03:30","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T16:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/02\/12\/al-khalifa-and-zhang-jilong-to-run-for-afc-presidency\/"},"modified":"2012-02-12T08:03:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-12T16:03:30","slug":"al-khalifa-and-zhang-jilong-to-run-for-afc-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2012\/02\/12\/al-khalifa-and-zhang-jilong-to-run-for-afc-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Khalifa and Zhang Jilong to run for AFC presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-left: 10px; float: right;\" alt=\"afc2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/afc2.jpg\" height=\"180\" width=\"239\" \/>GOAL &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, <strong>Bahrain Football Association president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and acting Asian Football Confederation (AFC) supremo Zhang Jilong have indicated they will both run to become the AFC head.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>Jilong is currently acting in the role following Mohamed bin Hammam&#8217;s departure after he was handed a lifetime ban from football-related activities for trying to buy votes in the lead-up to last year&#8217;s Fifa Presidential race.<\/p>\n<p>Bin Hammam has appealed to the Court for Arbitration of Sport (CAS) to reverse the decision but a date hasn&#8217;t been set for the hearing. The AFC must decide on a new leader on a full-time basis by the end of May and Al Khalifa and Jilong appear set to run.<\/p>\n<p>Al Khalifa told El Dawry El Kas Channel: &#8220;I have great confidence in getting great support from many parties, I received during launching the electoral battle with Mohamed Bin Hammam.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have received promises of support by many Asian federations to give me her voice in the election, and I have to speak with Mohamed Bin Hammam, where he stressed his support for me and his blessing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Al Khalifa wouldn&#8217;t be drawn on discussing a potential rivalry with potential West Asian candidate Yousef Al Serkal, who hails from UAE.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Jilong was quoted in the South China Morning Post as saying: &#8220;I am interested in becoming president permanently on the condition that I am recognised by all my friends and brothers on the executive committee, as well as the other 46 members&#8217; association.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to be one family, as brothers, for we are on one boat sailing towards the future. If I become president permanently, I wish to work for the solidarity and development of Asian football.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GOAL &#8211; KUALA LUMPUR, Bahrain Football Association president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22614,"featured_media":11380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions"],"views":2631,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22614"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}