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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP)—One of the men who decided to suspend leading FIFA executives Jack Warner and Mohamed bin Hammam says while soccer’s world governing body has been tainted, the game will overcome bribery and corruption issues.

Veteran Australian soccer broadcaster Les Murray, one of the 13 members of FIFA’s independent Ethics Committee, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that FIFA is still badly in need of reform to rebuild its integrity.

Warner resigned as FIFA vice president, president of CONCACAF and all soccer duties on Monday, maintaining what was described as the “presumption of innocence” by ensuring the sport’s governing body closed its investigation into his part in alleged bribing of Caribbean soccer union leaders in his native Trinidad last month during bin Hammam’s campaign to unseat Sepp Blatter as FIFA president.

Bin Hammam and two Caribbean soccer union employees, meanwhile, remain provisionally barred from all soccer-related duty while facing accusations of paying bribes to up to 25 Caribbean voters during the campaign. All have denied any wrongdoing.

There have since been calls for bin Hammam to follow Warner’s lead and step down for the good of the Asian soccer confederation and FIFA.

Murray said he was unable to comment on bin Hammam or Warner due to his role on the ethics committee.

“We know that Jack Warner has resigned, we know the terms of that resignation and those are the facts, but beyond that I can’t really comment on it,” he said.

“But I’ve said previously that FIFA is badly in need of broad structural and constitutional reform, so that its constitution and structure is such that it’s not so political, and that it is less vulnerable to corruption or suspicion of corruption.”

While the bribery and corruption charges are yet to be proven, Murray said FIFA had already suffered considerable damage through implication.

“We don’t know anything until we have evidence, but the perception is very, very bad,” he said. “When four people from the FIFA executive committee in the last seven months have been either banned or suspended—and one of them has resigned—from all football activities, it’s not a good look.”

Murray said it was obvious FIFA needed to act quickly to reverse that perception.

“There are 24 men on that (executive) committee and four of them have been implicated, plus a lot of people outside the executive committee,” he said. “So it’s not a good look and FIFA has some serious work to do to clean up its image.”

Despite much of the focus now centering on the Asian and CONCACAF confederations, Murray said corruption was not just a regional problem for soccer.

“Corruption can occur anywhere, in sport and in football in particular because it’s such a big game and there’s so much money involved in it,” he said.

But despite the allegations besieging FIFA and the damage done to its image, Murray said soccer is strong enough to survive.

“The game is unbelievably strong and appealing,” he said. “What matters most of all is what happens in the 90 minutes of a football match; and what is on the nose is FIFA, not the game itself.”

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MELBOURNE, May 31 (Reuters) - FIFA needs “complete structural” reform as the current set-up is based on political motives, according to Australian Les Murray, who sits on the global soccer governing body’s 13-man ethics committee.

Murray, a broadcaster and prominent soccer pundit in Australia, attended the weekend meeting at which vice-president Jack Warner and Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Mohamed bin Hammam were suspended over bribery allegations.

“I think the reform has to be very deep… there probably has to be complete structural and also constitutional reform,” he told local media on Tuesday.

“The structure of the organisation at the moment is too political. Decisions are based on political motives, and that’s not healthy for any organisation. That simply has to change.”

Trinidadian Warner and Bin Hammam were suspended over an allegation that the Qatari had paid Caribbean delegates bribes for their votes in Wednesday’s presidential election.

Bin Hammam withdrew from the presidential race on Sunday, leaving the way clear for incumbent Sepp Blatter to be re-elected unopposed for a fourth term as head of the organisation.

Blatter, however, has also been under fire over allegations the World Cup bidding process for the 2022 tournament was tainted by corruption, but the 75-year-old Swiss was cleared by the ethics committee.

Blatter denied FIFA was in crisis at a media conference on Monday, while nominating himself as the man to restore credibility to the battered organisation.

“The platform he is going to run or announce on Wednesday will tell us what his programme is, but whether it’s Sepp Blatter or somebody else, I hope the president of FIFA understands the massive image problem that FIFA has and has to go about pro-actively fixing it,” Murray added. (Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by John O’Brien; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)

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