May 27 – Samir Xaud has been elected the new president of the Brazilian FA (CBF), but numerous clubs boycotted the vote because of discontent over the electoral process.
Xaud, from Roraima, a state in the north of Brazil with little football tradition, was the sole candidate in the presidential election of Brazil’s supreme football body after Reinaldo Bastos of the Paulista Football Federation didn’t garner enough support among state federations to stand. Xaud, ultimately, had the support of 25 federations – except Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso – and ten clubs. Flamengo and Corinthians were among the clubs who didn’t attend, but, in the CBF elections, the state federations hold a decisive number of votes.
“Today we begin a new phase in the Brazilian Football Confederation,” said Xaud in his victory speech. “Our management, and I insist on using the plural, will be marked by the renewal of ideas and the inclusion of all those willing to contribute effectively to the full development of our sport. I did not get here alone. I am part of a group that came together with a single purpose: to build a new CBF, modern, participatory and committed to the development of the football industry.”
He will succeed Ednaldo Rodrigues who fell from grace after a Rio de Janeiro court removed him from his role for a second time over an alleged forged signature in a document that settled his first election. Rodrigues has dropped an appeal against the decision. Conmebol, the South American governing body, replaced Rodrigues with Argentine FA president Claudio Tapia as a South American representative on the FIFA Council.
Xaud’s team will include vice-presidents Ednailson Leite Rozenha, Fernando José Macieira Sarney, Flávio Diz Zveiter, Gustavo Dias Henrique, José Vanildo da Silva, Michelle Ramalho Cardoso, Ricardo Augusto Lobo Gluck Paul and Rubens Renato Angelotti. A son of former Brazilian president José Sarney, Sarney was previously a member of the FIFA Council, but Rodrigues ousted him in 2023.
Xaud said: “The image of the CBF has long been associated with distrust and distance. This will change. We will transform this institution so that each employee feels happy and proud to work here and so that everyone feels effectively represented.”
Xaud is not without controversy either. He is facing a lawsuit brought by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Roraima, which accuses him of involvement in a document forgery scheme during his tenure as general director of the General Hospital of Roraima (HGR) from 2017 to 2020. According to the complaint, he and other hospital administrators allegedly fabricated records of medical services to justify payments, resulting in a loss of R$1.4 million to public funds. In a local newspaper, he said he had a clean conscience.
Brazilian media UOL reported that Xaud has tried to “regularise” a rural property of 1,349 hectares in Rorainópolis, in the south of Roraima, within an environmental protection area. Xaud has denied it, but one of the documents in UOL’s report contains Xaud’s signature.
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