Football | Banned by FIFA, Platini plans to be at UEFA election

Michel Platini leaves the international Court of Arbitration for Sport after a hearing in Lausanne, Switzerland, on August 25
Michel Platini plans to speak at the UEFA presidential election to replace him next week, despite his current FIFA ban from soccer politics.
A spokesman for his Paris-based lawyers said on Wednesday that Platini had been invited to the Sept. 14 meeting in Athens by UEFA, and wanted to address delegates as part of a handover of the final two and a half years of his presidential mandate.
However, it is unclear if Platini is allowed to attend under the terms of his four-year ban for conflict of interest, over a USD2 million payment he received in 2011 from FIFA.
A spokesman for FIFA’s judging chamber said: “This would have to be decided by Mr [Hans-Joachim] Eckert as chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of the independent Ethics Committee. However, so far, he has not yet received a respective request by UEFA.”
UEFA also invited its outgoing president to European Championship matches in June and July since his final appeal case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport failed to overturn the ban.
Platini did not attend any Euro 2016 games in his native France despite FIFA ethics committee advice that he could go to stadiums but not discuss business with former colleagues.
The election is a head-to-head between UEFA vice president Michael van Praag of the Netherlands and Slovenian soccer federation leader Aleksander Ceferin. Angel Maria Villar of Spain withdrew from the race on Tuesday.
England backed Van Praag on Wednesday, though it is a rare public endorsement for the 68-year-old former Ajax club president compared to public pledges for Ceferin among the 55 UEFA members.
English Football Association vice chairman David Gill said Wednesday that Van Praag “would be able to provide the strong and credible leadership European football requires at a crucial moment for the global game.”
Van Praag is the “right choice to bring all aspects of the European game closer together,” said Gill, who is also a UEFA vice president.
France and Germany have backed Ceferin, who was little known before the campaign but has also attracted support in eastern Europe and Scandinavia.
Poland’s federation — led by Zbigniew Boniek, a former teammate of Platini at Juventus — also came out for Ceferin on Wednesday.
The Danish federation, which hosted a meeting for the two candidates with voters in Copenhagen yesterday, said that they want to discuss UEFA’s recently agreed changes to the Champions League for the 2018-21 seasons.
The deal guarantees more entries and tens of millions of dollars in prize money to clubs from the top four-ranked leagues — currently Spain, Germany, England and Italy — at the expense of mid-ranked countries like Denmark.
The Danish soccer bodies said they shared “great dissatisfaction with the process.”
“The process was wrong, the result is wrong,” Danish league CEO Claus Thomsen said. “A fundamental change of the format has been rushed through UEFA and the ECA [European Club Association] even though a new UEFA President will be elected in a week’s time and even though there are no publicly elected leadership in UEFA.”
Van Praag and Ceferin both say they oppose Europe’s top clubs breaking away to form a Super League. However, Danish officials say they fear a de facto Super League created within UEFA in partnership with elite clubs.
Influential clubs, including Juventus and Real Madrid, were seen to have exploited the absence of Platini, the UEFA president since 2007, to pressure the European soccer body this year for a more favorable deal. MDT/AP

Ethics committee places German official under probe

FIFA ethics investigators recommended a fine and community service yesterday for a former high-ranking German soccer federation official for failing to report possible corruption surrounding the 2006 World Cup.
Helmut Sandrock resigned as general secretary of the German federation in February. His former boss, federation president Wolfgang Niersbach, was banned from soccer for one year in July in the first sanction from the investigation into Germany’s World Cup bid. Niersbach stepped down from the job in November but remains a member of FIFA’s ruling council. He is appealing the suspension.
FIFA’s ethics committee found Niersbach guilty of failing to report findings of possible unethical conduct and conflicts of interest during the bidding process.
Sandrock is accused of similar misconduct and the ethics committee investigators recommended a fine of 50,000 Swiss francs (USD51,000), plus community service.
The probe involves irregular seven-figure payments and contracts during the bidding process and organization of the World Cup implicating senior officials.
Swiss federal prosecutors and German criminal and tax investigators also have wider ongoing criminal cases into the 2006 World Cup — a hugely successful tournament at the time which the host nation called its “Summer Fairytale.” MDT/AP