KEIR RADNEDGE in Budapest: Danny Jordaan has no doubt that the FIFA reform process is unstoppable, whatever the levels of resistance within the ‘old guard’ of the world football family.

Jordaan, chief executive of the South African World Cup operation in 2010, was speaking after a meeting of members of the African football confederation ahead of this week’s FIFA Congress in Budapest.

He said: “You only have to see what is happening in Africa: we have eight new presidents of federations, all of them professional men, young, highly competent. So you can see that change is already under way.

“We have proposed age limits and term limits for the FIFA president. OK, there is nothing on the table right now but at least these issues are being discussed which was not the case in the past.That is a big step forward in itself.

“It always used the be the case that football people put you in power and only God could put you out. That will not be the case for much longer. Momentum and time will see to that.”

Jordaan knows, better than almost any one from his South African background, about the challenge of upheaval within a society, whether national or sporting.

He said: “In South Africa, in the 1980s, the apartheid government tried to manage change but in the end the power of momentum just swept it all away.”

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