Sheikh Salman warns of ‘FIFA bankruptcy’

FIFA presidential candidate Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa warned that world football's besieged ruling body could be bankrupt in two years under proposals put forward by his election rivals.

With FIFA having already reported a 100 million loss (92.2 million euros), Sheikh Salman is adamant that the Swiss coffers could be empty by 2018 if any one of his rivals makes good on their spending plans if elected to succeed Sepp Blatter on February 26. "FIFA's financial status has very substantially declined over the last year alone: we are faced with a deficit of presently unknown proportions if we don't turn this ship around," he told insideworldfootball.com.

"These are the figures that FIFA published in their last annual report: Income and expenses for the 2011-2014 period generated a result of 338 million (311.9 million euros). Had we already adopted the proposed extreme new expenditure (a campaign promise by some), we would be in substantial negative territory already today - if we include the 100m loss FIFA generated last year alone," said the Bahrain-based Salman

“The reality is by 2018, FIFA will have zero reserves left if today’s status quo remains unchanged, and if there continues to be a substantial lack of income from tv and marketing rights sales.”