So it is reassuring to note that Shaikh Salman’s recently-published 24-page campaign platform – complete with strikingly relaxed, western-style portrait on the cover – contains little waffle and much good sense.

I want to focus on four main areas of his proposals in three of which I find what he has to say encouraging and one where I am less convinced. (I have put direct quotations from the campaign platform in italics.)

Development spending

“FIFA development spending overall must be significantly increased…

“FIFA needs to increase the percentage of its development spending from under 20 per cent of gross revenues now to a higher target, using best practice and benchmarks from comparable organisations (inside or outside football).”

Cynics will see this as a crude, if indirect, pledge of money for votes and hence very “old FIFA”.

However, he is right: as I pointed out when the 2015-2018 budget became public in March 2014, development projects got the thin end of the wedge in the governing body’s spending plans for the current quadrennium.

Whereas the World Cup was allotted a budget up 55.5 per cent from the previous cycle and “operational expenses and services” was granted 69.2 per cent more than in 2011-2014, development projects were assigned an increase of just 12.5 per cent - $900 million (£614 million/€839 million) as opposed to $800 million (/£546 million/€745 million). Yes, still enough to make most other sports green with envy.

This out of then projected revenue for FIFA of a nice round $5 billion (£3.4 billion/€4.6 billion).

“Now FIFA has the obligation to step up the quality of its development by ensuring that it is needs-based and less politics-based…

“FIFA should also re-evaluate the structure for how it delivers development, for example by examining the creation of an independent football development agency, a 'World Football Foundation', integrating the expertise from global specialists…

“I shall introduce the toughest ever control mechanisms any sports or other not-for-profit body knows today…I shall seek professional advice and support how to deliver a fool-proof system of controls that will eliminate corrupt and covert criminal practices.”

If you are going to spend more on development, then it is imperative that allocation mechanisms be ethical and robust.

What most interested me about these comments was this concept of a new World Football Foundation which, in turn, reminded me of Olympic Solidarity (OS), the body through which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) redistributes about $1(£0.68/€0.93) out of every $6 (£4/€5.50) it raises from the sale of broadcasting rights to the Olympic Games.

Given how close Shaikh Salman is to Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti chair of the IOC’s Olympic Solidarity Commission and FIFA Executive Committee (ExCo) member, it would strike me as less than surprising if the Bahraini viewed OS as a model for how FIFA might distribute development funds to its own member associations.

The Olympic Movement, after all, has managed to prevent OS’s programmes from becoming politicised in the way that FIFA’s development programmes are widely perceived to have been.

Women’s football

“Let’s really open up our game to the other half of the world with a global development plan, new competitions and a dedicated and increased budget…

“Sports such as golf, volleyball and tennis have shown that female sport can be as good if not better than men’s and basketball is well on the way.

“The reality is that we are well behind these other sports in terms of instrumental support and promotion.

“Changing the current reality/perception of a male-dominated sport will also have a big positive impact on commercial revenues for FIFA and its members.”

Once again, cynics might dismiss what Shaikh Salman has to say on this score as thinly-disguised electioneering.

Bearing in mind that the electorate in this contest are the overwhelmingly male-dominated National Associations, however, I am not sure that this charge holds water.

The critical thing to me about these comments, over and above the willingness to benchmark against other sports, is that he makes the link between development of the women’s game and FIFA’s finances.

Though it is by far the most cash-rich International Federation, FIFA’s commercial model has a fundamental weakness: it is dependent almost entirely on one competition that takes place once every four years – the FIFA World Cup.

For all the experiments with futsal and beach football, Club World Cups and even video gaming, it has long seemed to me self-evident that it is the Women’s World Cup that provides by far the most promising medium-term avenue to reinforcing this flawed financial model.

Helped no doubt by recently-published viewing figures for the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada, it looks like Shaikh Salman has drawn similar conclusions.

And for all the many other good reasons for fostering the development of women’s football around the world, it is its commercial potential more than anything that will make it actually happen.

Expanding the World Cup

“Increasing the number of teams that can participate in the World Cup will certainly help football to develop – however this cannot be used as an election tool.

“Therefore the decision on the number of participating teams should be professionally analysed and assessed, in full consultation with the associations, clubs and all stakeholders, before a decision on any increase is taken.”

I am far from convinced that expanding the World Cup still further would be a good idea, but I am convinced that promising to do so could be a potent vote-winner.

I was pleasantly surprised therefore that Shaikh Salman has adopted this stance.

A detailed, hard-headed, professional analysis, as far as possible removed from the heat of electoral battle, is clearly the right way to proceed on this matter.

The separation of FIFA business from FIFA politics

“I would adopt a non-executive role with the focus on empowerment of the professional staff to manage the day-to-day business under a CEO working according to best practice…

“To reach the goal of becoming a model organisation, FIFA must separate commercial from regulatory activities by restructuring itself into “Football FIFA” that runs and governs football professionally, and “Business FIFA” that deals with commerce, marketing contracts and income generation…

“The “Business FIFA” will be a commercial, independent body of savvy marketing and rights professionals. They will have the function to optimise Business FIFA’s income, to ensure that the game is well financed so that we can increase our contributions to our associations and stakeholders.”

Though I would not suggest that Shaikh Salman is wrong to propose this restructuring under current circumstances, nor do I think it would solve FIFA’s problems unless accompanied by a change in the mindset of many football officials.

The most high-profile of FIFA’s recent governance issues, after all, concern not the sale of broadcasting and marketing rights, which have fetched enormous sums, but questions about how the proceeds of those deals have subsequently been redistributed and, of course, how hosting rights for the World Cup itself have been granted.

Development spending is dealt with above; as for hosting rights, I am not convinced that handing the power to decide future World Cup hosts to national associations is the answer – unless the power of confederation bosses to influence the decisions of associations within their respective geographical bailiwicks is somehow much diluted.

What such a restructuring would achieve, or so it seems to me, is to remove the money-making side of FIFA entirely from the reach of the FIFA Executive Committee, a forum whose structure allows confederation chiefs to wield more power, certainly in terms of the power of veto, than the FIFA President himself. 

Instead, the body’s revenue-generating activities would be the unequivocal responsibility of a chief executive who would be hand-picked, presumably, by Shaikh Salman himself - and incentivised to apply cold, hard, commercial logic to the business of income maximisation.

Shaikh Salman also speaks, incidentally, of rapidly launching the new FIFA corporate entity by “hiring the best of breed in the market”, raising the question of who this chief executive might be.

It is no more than a hunch, but having once been called to interview the two men together in London, I cannot help wondering if he perhaps has a certain Richard Scudamore in mind for the role.

Now that would be something: luring to FIFA the man who has turned England’s Premier League into a global property and the most commercially successful national club football competition the world has seen.

Heck, it might even be enough to wrench the spotlight away from United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the investigation that has seemingly brought down the curtain on the Sepp Blatter era at FIFA. At least for a day or two.