Jerome Champagne Thinks He is the Change FIFA Needs

"FIFA, FIFA, FIFA. People always blame FIFA, FIFA, FIFA."

Jerome Champagne gets agitated when trying to defend what little is left of soccer's governing body's reputation. He sat by the window of his house on Monday preparing to release his platform in his run for the FIFA presidency.

Champagne has a great deal of ground to cover if he—in an unprecedented upstaging—is to turn in a successful campaign against incumbent Sepp Blatter, who has managed to cling to that seat for the last 16 years.

After working behind the scenes at FIFA from 1999 until 2010, Champagne, 56, decided that the body needs "fresh air" and there is still "hope for football" and that he is the man to lead it in this massive image reconstruction. The platform that he released on Monday ahead of the election in May, 2015 makes Champagne sound like an I-can-do-no-wrong saint who'll change everything that soccer needs changed: he wants to strengthen national associations, release the Michael Garcia report on the bidding process of Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 World Cups, take TV bids away from the hands of the much-maligned FIFA Executive Committee, and make FIFA President's salary and personal assets public.

"If we know the salary of the President of the United States, and the salary of the President of Norway what stops us from also knowing the salary of the FIFA President," he says.

He cites the great imbalance of soccer power between continents—Africa has only four seats in the Executive Committee while Europe has eight despite the same number of national federations. And between countries: "The club finishing last in the English Premier League makes more money than the 16 clubs of Belgium league combined," he says. "I want to work towards redistributing this power."

He feels some of these ideas "could seduce the people in the football pyramid" into backing his campaign.

But FIFA has worked so hard to build an image for itself so cringeworthy and hierarchical that it's tough to believe a candidate who seems to be all for decentralization of power, democratic voting and transparency. After all, Champagne worked at FIFA for more than a decade, and his former job was as a French diplomat.

And once a politician, always a politician: when asked if he ever posed these democratic suggestions while he served as an international advisor (1999-02), then as the FIFA deputy secretary general, then as the President's delegate (2005-07) and finally as Director of International Relations (2007-10)—all during Blatter's terms—Champagne gives a "what's in the past is in the past" response.

He has an appetite for going into long, meandering accounts of isolated incidents of FIFA's goodwill, quoting their stand against Apartheid in 1966 and their decision to grant FIFA affiliation to Palestine in 1998. But then sometimes Champagne sounds like his much-hated opponent, mouthing buzzwords like "task forces", "democratic structures" and catch phrases like "football has benefited from globalization" and "football's beauty lies in that it's so universal" as answers to completely unrelated questions.

When the elections for the next FIFA President happen on May 29 in Zurich, the organization's headquarters, each national association will have a vote in the decision. It is easy to see Champagne's top campaign priority of setting aside a majority of the Executive Committee seats for heads of national associations as a desperate ploy for votes from those same heads.

But Champagne argues that FIFA was made for national associations, that there's an immediate need for re-balancing of power within soccer, that really he's only doing what should have been done long ago. To his credit, in 2010, when he was sacked from FIFA, investigative journalist Andrew Jennings described Champagne as Blatter's last clean aide.

And that's the thing he's most careful about: No shadow boxing with his former boss and current opponent. Remind him about Blatter's multiple sexist comments and guffaws, and he says: "But you have to remember that at a time when no one believed in women's football, Mr. Blatter did."

He's trying to convince anyone who'd listen that every time you hear something evil happening in soccer, FIFA isn't always to blame, because the president doesn't choose the Executive Committee and because FIFA has almost zero control over confederations such as the UEFA and the Asian Football Confederation, of which Bin Hammam (who stood against Blatter in the 2011 elections, only to be conveniently—and probably accurately—accused of corruption, then banned) was president.

And perhaps because he had no stakes in the decision, Champagne acknowledges that everything about the decision to give the 2022 World Cup to Qatar—right from the corruption allegations to political influence to impossible weather conditions and the systemic worker exploitation—is a major disaster for FIFA.

If the World Cup is indeed taken away from Qatar after Garcia releases the executive summary of his report next month, Champagne would rather the next best bidder, the U.S., get the event than hold a revote or invite fresh bids.

In theory, Champagne makes a strong case for becoming the most powerful man in soccer, mostly because the current most powerful man in soccer is an incorrigible asshole. While Blatter's worldview is as perverse as his sense of humor, Champagne has lived in Oman, Brazil, Los Angeles and Cuba and helped build soccer in Kosovo, Palestine and Cyprus. But while many European federation heads have expressed frustration at Blatter for attempting to maintain his grip on the sport, there's also no indication that they are willing to welcome Champagne or anybody else with open arms.