Blatter ‘reckless’ to pay Platini $2m, new court ruling says
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, March 13, (AP): Sepp Blatter was “reckless” when he paid $2 million to Michel Platini in a transaction that led both to be banned from world soccer, according to a Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling.
The former FIFA president also bypassed the body’s executive committee to extend Platini’s pension plan by four years — unlawfully adding more than $1 million to the former UEFA president’s retirement fund.
Details of the hearing in August were revealed in a newly published
ring to Barcelona’s remarkable achievement last week when they recovered from a 4-0 first-leg defeat to beat Paris St Germain 6-1 at the Nou Camp.
But the Portuguese league leaders could also look nearer to home for inspiration, having themselves won 3-0 away to AS Roma at the start of this season.
That win, their fourth in 13 visits to Italy, took them into the Champions League group stage against the odds after Roma had held them to a 1-1 draw in the first leg of the playoff tie.
It remains to be seen how Porto
68-page verdict written by CAS judges to explain why they dismissed Blatter’s appeal to overturn a six-year ban in December.
As an executive committee member since 2002, Platini was due a pension of 3 percent of his final FIFA stipend — $300,000 in 2015 when he was first banned — for each year of service. It would be paid annually for an equal number of years. By unilaterally supporting Platini’s request to start the plan in 1998, Blatter unlawfully created a pension fund for his former protege of $2.6 million in 2015 instead of
coach Nuno Espirito Santo, a firm believer in the idea a team is built from the back, will approach a game where his side will need to take the initiative.
“Our basis principle is defensive solidarity,” he said after the 4-0 win at Arouca on Friday.
Meanwhile, remember Claudio Ranieri? The man who penned the most romantic story in soccer’s annals by making Leicester City English champions and who walked away from Sevilla’s stadium last month believing he could write another in the Champions League.
Well, if a week is a long time in football,
$1.52 million, the judges noted. “The credit awarded to Platini therefore certainly amounted to a gift as he was not entitled to such credit,” the three judges said, concluding that a six-year ban for the now 81-year-old Blatter is “not disproportionate and, indeed, reasonable and fair.”
“The standard of ethical conduct required under the (FIFA code of ethics) should be and should be seen to be applied to the FIFA President as rigorously as if not more rigorously than that applied to anyone else,” the CAS panel wrote.
The full judgment confirms details
three weeks between last-16 legs in Europe’s elite competition is a positive eternity with Ranieri already fondly consigned to history.
It is to the chagrin of many in Leicester that their Italian folk hero has gone, denied the opportunity to try to guide them into the quarter-finals at the King Power Stadium on Tuesday.
Instead, in his old assistant Craig Shakespeare, who on Sunday was handed the manager’s job until the end of the season, a city — and an impatient club board — now trusts.
At 2-1 down and with Jamie Vardy’s
never published by the FIFA ethics and appeals committees which previously judged Blatter, the long-time president, and Platini, his expected successor. Three separate judging panels agreed there was no verbal agreement or valid contract for Platini to receive backdated salary in 2011 for working as Blatter’s presidential adviser from 1998-2002. The soccer officials said they agreed Platini should get 1 million Swiss francs annually, but later signed a contract for 300,000 Swiss francs to ensure he did not earn more than FIFA’s then secretary general.
away goal offering a raft to cling to on a night when Leicester were outplayed, Ranieri had not unreasonably felt the result might be the turning point in a woeful season.
Alas for the Italian he was right. The next day Leicester’s Thai owners ditched Ranieri and from that moment the entire complexion of this knockout tie was transformed.
After the ‘Shakespearean’ age dawned, Leicester managed to find fresh belief to chisel out two crucial Premier League wins that have eased them away from the relegation zone.