On the world football map, Burundi has never seemed much thicker than the head of a needle. His national team ranks 124rd place in the FIFA rankings, between Cyprus and Botswana. But this African country can boast of having, since Friday 31 May, a football pioneer. Lydia Nsekera has become the first woman elected to the executive committee of the International Football Federation.
The event took place in Mauritius, where the FIFA Congress was held. It was planned, announced, scheduled. The world institution had taken, a long time ago, the decision to take a step towards parity by electing a woman to the "comex", the holy of holies of FIFA, a sort of government where the 24 most powerful leaders of the football planet. But the election for 4 years of Burundian Lydia Nsekera nonetheless remains a historic date.
The African leader was in competition with the Australian Moya Dodd, the New Zealander Paula Kearns and the representative of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Sonia Bien-Aimé. She won with 95 votes and joined the executive committee for 4 years. Moya Dodd (70 votes) and Sonia Bien-Aimé (38 votes) also made their debut, but they were co-opted for only one year.
Daughter of a former football club president, from one of Burundi's royal families, Princess Lydia Nsekera has presided over her national federation since 2004. Aged 46, she often explains having discovered football in the footsteps of her father. “I accompanied him to the stadium when I was barely 6 or 7 years old,” she says. Having become a business manager, owner of a garage with around twenty employees, she has never left the world of football. Widowed Lydia Nsekera raises her two boys alone. She is also a member of the IOC.
His election is historic, but the road remains long. Lydia Nsekera will sit on the FIFA executive committee surrounded by 23 men. And it is not certain that his voice will always be heard there. Sepp Blatter, the president of the International Federation, commented on the news with some irony: “It took us 109 years to get to this point. » Before taking the opportunity to indulge in his favorite exercise these days: criticizing UEFA. “UEFA had four seats to renew now, they could have put women in, they don’t have the courage,” suggested the Swiss. They put in men, good ones, of course, but we open ourselves up to women. » Michel Platini, the boss of UEFA, surely did not appreciate…
