Top Euro clubs slam 40-team World Cup plan
Real, Barca and Bayern opponents of Fifa move
>> NYON: A package of reforms proposed by Fifa to clean up the scandal-plagued governing body of soccer was angrily criticised yesterday by Europe’s powerful clubs, who said it would increase frustration among the sport’s stakeholders.
The European Club Association (ECA), which represents more than 200 clubs including the major ones such as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, said its members were “not prepared to be further ignored”.
Fifa is in the middle of an unprecedented crisis, with criminal investigations into the sport under way in the United States and Switzerland. Its president Sepp Blatter is among officials who have been suspended by its own ethics committee.
Fifa announced a package of planned reforms on Thursday which included term limits for members. A suggestion to increase the fouryearly World Cup to 40 teams from the current 32 was put on hold.
“Given the recommendations that have now been presented, ECA was right to believe that a reform process led from within is unable to deliver a sustainable governance model, which is fit for the 21st century,” the club association, led by Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, said in a statement.
“ECA will now take the required time to assess how it wishes to position itself in relation to this latest development leaving all options open.”
Nearly all the world’s top players are with European clubs and Fifa’s international competitions depend on agreements which allow them to be released for their national teams on certain dates.
Meanwhile, the Fifa ethics committee will question Michel Platini “most likely between Dec 16 and 18”, a source close to football’s world governing body said Friday.
Platini’s lawyer said at the end of November that the ethics body’s investigatory chamber wants the Uefa chief banned for life over a suspect US$2.0-million payment he received from Fifa’s now suspended leader Blatter in 2011.
Platini and Blatter “have asked to be heard, and this will be granted,” a source close to Fifa told AFP.
“Michel Platini will be heard most likely between December 16 and 18”.
The 60-year-old Frenchman, until recently the favourite to take over football’s world governing body, is set to appear before the Fifa ethics committee’s adjudicatory chamber.
No further information has been released from Blatter’s legal team concerning his own hearings.
Like Platini, Blatter was handed a provisional 90-day suspension on Oct 8 while an investigation is held into the suspect payment.
That has ruled the one-time France international player out of the race for the Fifa presidency to be decided in the election on February 26.
The investigation, alongside a US bribery inquiry and a Swiss probe into the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, has plunged Fifa into its worst-ever crisis.
Blatter is also under investigation by Swiss authorities for ‘criminal mismanagement’ over the payment to Platini, ostensibly for consultancy work completed nine years earlier.
Swiss authorities are treating Platini as a witness in the case, rather than a suspect.
Both men have denied any wrongdoing but admit there was no contract for the work or payment.
Platini has appealed against his suspension at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), with a source close to the case saying that decision will be taken “in the coming days”.
Blatter’s lawyers have not indicated whether or not the suspended Fifa chief has appealed against his own suspension before the CAS.
He has 21 days to make an appeal, with the deadline falling around Dec 9.