Jerome Champagne has slammed rival David Ginola's bid to become the next FIFA president, claiming that the Frenchman is giving the electoral process a bad image.
The 47-year-old announced last week that he would challenge Sepp Blatter for the highest seat within football's world governing body, in a campaign being financially backed by betting company Paddy Power.
However, former FIFA executive committee member Champagne has played down Ginola's chances of being elected as president, after the former Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United man failed to name a single ExCo member in a recent interview.
"If you want to really govern FIFA, you need to know the names of the ExCo, you need to know what the IFAB [International Football Association Board] is about," he is quoted as saying by FourFourTwo.
"You don't run [a campaign] paid by a bookmaking company, you don't launch yourself into crowd-funding, asking people to give money and then take a 10% cut for yourself.
"It's not the way I've decided to run, but we live in a democracy and in the world of today we can see a lot of stunts like that, PR operations and unfortunately it doesn't give this electoral process a good image. But we live in democracy."
Jordan's Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein is also in the running to challenge Blatter, should he receive the five nominations needed from world football associations.
Daniel Lewis
