By Paul Nicholson
June 8 – The race for the UEFA presidency looks certain to have a new candidate with Slovenian FA president Aleksander Čeferin expected to submit his nomination within the next 48 hours.
The Slovenian FA website states that he “will personally speak about the candidacy in the coming days.” Presumably that will come after he makes his candidacy official.
Čeferin is currently in Moscow attending a regional conference of 13 UEFA member associations UEFA – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkey – and has won their support for a UEFA presidential challenge.
48-year-old Čeferin, a lawyer from Grosuplje, has been privately canvasing federations and is winning encouragement particularly from the eastern and northern Europeans. He has also garnered support from Italy.
The Nordic federations of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, generally never afraid to make their opinions public in UEFA, have made it clear that they feel UEFA needs to have a political change at the top following the end of the Michel Platini and Gianni Infantino regime and have issued a statement saying that they share Čeferin’s ideas on the need for a reform of the European governing body.
“With Čeferin we have a chance for a new start for UEFA. With him we share the same interest to implement certain reforms, we share a similar view of the good governance of European and world football,” said the statement.
Nominations to join the UEFA presidential race have to be submitted by July 20, with the vote by the 55 member nations being taken at UEFA’s September 14 extraordinary congress in Athens, Greece.
So far only Holland’s Michael van Praag has officially announced his candidacy. Current interim UEFA president Maria Angel Villar Llona is expected to announce his candidacy, though he is also under pressure in Spain and facing challenges to his presidency of the Spanish federation.
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