Radix
Jérôme Champagne (born June 15, 1958) is a former French diplomat. He served from 1983 to 1998, and then became a consultant in international football, serving as an executive at FIFA from 1999 to 2010.
He transitioned from diplomacy to football as a result of the 1998 FIFA World Cup, where he was diplomatic advisor and chief of protocol of the French organizing committee. He then joined FIFA where he successively held the positions of international adviser to the president (1999–2002), deputy secretary general (2002–05), delegate of the president (2005–07) and finally director of international relations (2007–10) during the terms of President Sepp Blatter.
He left FIFA in 2010 and became football commissioner for the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar (2010) and an adviser to the Palestinian Football Federation (PFA) and the Palestine Olympic Committee (POC), the Football Federation of Kosovo, the Cyprus Turkish Football Federation (CTFA) and finally the Congolese football club TP Mazembe of Lubumbashi.
Champagne was twice a candidate to replace Blatter in FIFA's presidency elections of 2015 and 2016. However, each time he failed to secure enough support.