US Soccer Federation reviewing presidential candidates

CHICAGO, Illinois: The US Soccer Federation has received the required letters of nomination for eight potential candidates in its 2018 presidential election, the governing body said Wednesday.

Candidates were required to submit three or more letters of nomination by midnight on Tuesday in order to be placed on the ballot.It wasn’t clear which of the nine people who had declared an intention to run had failed to submit three letters of nomination, and US Soccer’s nominating and governance committee said in a statement on Wednesday that it wouldn’t name the candidates until background checks on each of them had been completed.

The background checks are required by the body’s bylaws to ensure that a candidate has “no conviction or no contest plea to a felony or crime of moral turpitude”.Several of the potential candidates, including former men’s national team players Eric Wynalda, Kyle Martino and Paul Caligiuri and former women’s national team goalkeeper Hope Solo, have said they had the required nominations.Sunil Gulati, president of the federation since 2006, said this month he would not seek re-election in the wake of the US failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.