The Prince Who Challenged Sepp Blatter

Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan wasn't even born when Sepp Blatter first joined FIFA. Yet, today the 39-year-old had the chance to cause a massive shake-up in the world of sports by challenging Blatter in the FIFA Presidential election. Unfortunately, the Prince got no fairy tale ending. In fact, Ali made the election rather anticlimactic, conceding after the first round of voting. A simple majority in the second round of voting would have decided the winner. But here's what we have again: four more years of Blatter, his fifth term as FIFA President.

Half Blatter's age, Prince Ali's campaign strategy was similar to all those who had previously challenged the FIFA boss. He promised to be the opposite of everything that Blatter stood for. Ali made transparency, accessibility and crisis management his buzzwords, the latter especially being something that FIFA desperately needs right now and in which Ali has expertise. Unlike Blatter, who has refused to step down after one corruption scandal after another, and has defied popular perception to reign for another four years, Ali had said that he wanted to be in charge for only one term.

He was the first candidate since 2002 who even made it to a voting process to challenge Blatter.

Much of Ali's relative success had to do with his influence and power as the Prince of Jordan, son of late King Hussein and the brother of the current King of Jordan, King Hussein II. He served in the King's Royal Guards special security for nine years before he was made director of Jordan's Center for Security and Crisis Management. Ali's website also says that he is the 43rd generation direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Yet, he opened his presidential address on Friday with the words: "Football has no royalty. I'm Ali. I'm one of you."

That's what he tried to prove with his work so far in soccer, too. He founded the West Asian Football Federation and got 13 countries on board with an aim to build the brand of Asian nations within FIFA and decentralize Europe's dominance. Unlike Blatter, whose face sends meme-generation in beast mode every time shit hits the fan in the world of soccer, Ali commanded a lot of respect as someone who was genuinely advocating for reform.

As FIFA's youngest vice president and executive committee member, he often pushed for equal rights despite opposition from within the governing body. He gave proof of that when he led a successful campaign to lift FIFA's regressive ban on the hijab in 2012. It was a major breakthrough that allowed millions of women across the world to play soccer and participate in official games with the hope that they can make it to their national teams.

Ali, who serves as the President of the Jordan Football Association, was also one of the very few FIFA insiders who openly called for FIFA Ethics Chief Michael Garcia's 2014 report on corruption within FIFA to be published in its entirety.

It's likely that after losing, Ali will give up his executive committee position in FIFA, just like he had promised. If Ali's parting words are anything to go by — "I want to especially thank all of you who were brave enough to vote for me" — who'd want to stay to suffer the wrath of Blatter anyway?