Blatter in final fight to overturn FIFA ban

SEPP Blatter will mount his final challenge against his sixyear FIFA ban today, following more than a year of scandal that saw him thrown out of football in disgrace.

The former FIFA boss has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) seeking to overturn a suspension imposed by world football’s governing body.

“I’m very confident,” the 80-year-old Blatter said last week, although his prospects for an outright victory would appear to be remote.

The now notorious, endl es s l y debated c as e f i r s t emerged in September of last year, when Swiss prosecutors said they were investigating Blatter over a suspect 2 million Swiss franc payment ($2 million) he authorised in 2011 to his one-time heir apparent, Michel Platini. Those revelations initially triggered a provisional suspension by FIFA’s ethics committee.

A full investigation and trial by FIFA’s in-house court found Blatter and Platini both guilty of ethics violations. They were banned from football for eight years in December.

A FIFA appeals committee c ut t hose pena lt ies to si x years in Februar y, just before Blatter’s successor and fellow Swiss national, Gianni Infant i no, was elected a s FIFA’s new president.

Blatter’s hopes for redemp- tion at CAS are likely hampered by Platini’s failed appeal at the Lausanne-based court.

In a May ruling CAS judges said they were “not convinced” that the $2 million payment was legitimate.

They did, however, reduce the suspension against the former French star and European football chief from six years to four, judging FIFA’s penalty “too severe”.

Throughout the protracted saga, both Blatter and Platini have insisted that the payment was part of a legitimate oral contract. Platini had been hired by FIFA as a consultant from 1999 to 2002 and had apparently not received his full compensation.

The two men claimed the $2 million was authorised in 2011 as an honest effort to settle that account.

Judges at FIFA and CAS have so far found that argument unpersuasive.

Blatter has maintained his innocence as his four decade FIFA career unravelled over the last 13 months, and continued that trend in the interview last week.

“FIFA made the contract with Platini, and this was an oral contract,” he said at a plush restaurant in Zurich.

“So far in the FIFA committees, in the ethics committee and in the appeal committee, they were saying: we don’t believe that. But we are not all liars. So I think there is a good chance this panel will believe that there was a contract.”

Arguments at CAS a re expected to last just one day, although a decision may take several weeks.