Fifa orders 8- year ban on Blatter and Platini
Fifa president Sepp Blatter and European soccer boss Michel Platini were both banned from soccer for eight years on Monday for ethics violations, leaving the global game leaderless as it struggles with a swirl of corruption cases.
The pair had been suspended in October while an investigation was carried out into a 2.02 million payment that soccer’s global governing body made to Mr Platini in 2011, with Mr Blatter’s approval.
The decision means that Mr Blatter’s 17 years at the helm of world soccer will end in disgrace, and spells the end of Mr Platini’s hopes of replacing the 79- year- old in a presidential election in February. The Swiss came out swinging, holding a news conference to tell reporters that he was sorry only that the president of Fifa was being treated as a “punching ball”.
Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini remained defiant on Monday despite being banned from football by Fifa.
Both men vowed to keep fighting in their own defence after being suspended for eight years over an ethics violation.
Blatter, Fifa’s president since 1998, said he had been “betrayed” by the ethics committee which levelled his suspension and accused judges of ignoring key evidence he believes should have cleared his name.
Platini, head of European federation Uefa and a Fifa vice- president, had even harsher words for the ethics judges who threw him out of the game he had been poised to lead.
He said the Fifa decision was a “masquerade” intended to “sully” his name.
The Fifa court ruled that both men abused their positions over a 2 million Swiss franc ($ 2 million) payment Blatter authorised to Platini in 2011, reportedly for work done a decade earlier.
‘LET ME DO IT’
Shortly after the verdict was announced, Blatter addressed the world media at the Sonnenberg conference centre in Zurich, which symbolically is the site of Fifa’s former headquarters.
Unshaven and with a plaster bandage on his cheek, Blatter was flanked by his daughter Corinne, who has long been one of her father’s most outspoken defenders.
“You ask me if I feel betrayed... the answer is yes,” Blatter said in response to a question, adding that he was “astonished” judges had rejected evidence in his defence.
He said he had become a “punching ball” and that he was “sorry for Fifa”, shaken by an unprecedented scandal which has seen 39 people indicted by the US justice department over corruption and bribery going back decades.
Days after the scandal kicked off in May, Blatter promised to stand down when his successor was chosen by Fifa’s 209- member associations at a congress later set for February.
But his goal was to remain in office for that vote and to preside over a last major Fifa meeting before retirement.
“Let me work at this Congress. Let me do it,” Blatter said in an interview with Sky News, restating his desire to leave Fifa on his own terms.
There has been speculation that Blatter authorised the payout to Platini in 2011 to secure the Frenchman’s backing for his presidential re- election bid that year.
“It was not a bribe and there was no help from Europe in any election in 2011,” Blatter told Sky. “Never in my life would I offer money to get something.”
You ask me if I feel betrayed... the answer is yes. I am sorry for football... I am now suspended eight years. Suspended eight years for what? ... I will fight. I will fight until the end..
— SEPP BLATTER