By Andrew Warshaw
December 22 – As European football takes stock of Michel Platini’s shock suspension from the game, the UEFA president has vowed to take the same action as Sepp Blatter to try and clear his name, calling his eight-year ban over the infamous SFr2 million payment a “pure masquerade”.
Until he was suspended in October, Platini was the favourite to succeed Blatter as FIFA president at February’s election but has now suffered a crushing blow, more so as a result of being forced to relinquish his UEFA presidency.
Platini wasted no time saying his ban was a deliberate conspiracy to stop him from running for FIFA president.
He said his fate had been sealed well before his full hearing on December 18. “The decision is no surprise to me: the procedure initiated against me by FIFA’s ethics committee is a pure masquerade,” the Frenchman said in a statement.
“It has been rigged to tarnish my name by bodies I know well and who for me are bereft of all credibility or legitimacy.”
At stake for Platini is why the so-called “disloyal payment” claimed to be for FIFA work he carried out nine years earlier was deemed an ethics code breach by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert. Platini feels that since the money was due to him, he should have been exonerated.
Platini said his conscience was clear and that he would challenge the decision in the Court of Arbitration for Sport and ultimately seek damages in civil proceedings even though FIFA rules discourage civil action . “I will fight this to the end,” he said.
The Frenchman said his “behavior has always been faultless and I’m at peace with my myself. In due course I will go to the civil court to claim all the damages my reputation has suffered over too many long weeks.”
Time is running out as far as any appeal to CAS is concerned. A ruling by sport’s highest court will have to made by mid-January since Platini, were he to win, would then have to go through an integrity check before being clear to run in the February 26 ballot.
The verdict was met with incredulity in French football circles. Federation president Noel Le Graet described it as “unbelievable” as he maintained support for perhaps his country’s greatest ever player.
Le Graet said in a statement: “His life has been dedicated to football. He has done great things for UEFA and I hope that his good faith will be recognised.
“It seems unbelievable, but it doesn’t surprise me. The spokesperson of the Ethics Commission had already announced that Michel would be suspended for several years.”
That support was not shared by the head of the English FA, Greg Dyke, who had previously backed Platini to become FIFA president after Blatter announced that he was stepping down.
Dyke said he felt it would spell the end for the former France international’s FIFA ambitions. “We took an early decision to support Mr Platini, we thought he had done a very good job with UEFA, and we were clearly all very disappointed when all this came out. We didn’t know,” Dyke said on BBC radio.
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