Three-way fight for the vacant UEFA presidency
After a near year-long stasis, UEFA is about to find itself a new president, and the options for delegates of the 55 national associations, who meet in an emergency congress on September 14 in Athens, are intriguing.
The three runners are: comparatively unknown Aleksander Ceferin, who is head of the Slovenia FA, Dutch federation president Michael Van Praag and senior vice-president Angel Maria Villar from Spain.
Ceferin, who is the favourite, has support from the old eastern block nations plus the Nordics, while the Republic of Ireland has also declared itself in his camp. And their reasoning is simple – these are the nations who want to maintain the status quo in terms of Champions League and European Championship access which was reorganised to suit them (and his own electoral purposes) by Michel Platini.
The Frenchman was removed from the platform last October by the FIFA ethics committee as it launched its investigation into the strange affair of the SFr2million paid to him by then FIFA president Sepp Blatter out of world federation funds in February 2011.
Platini said it was a long-delayed payment for work undertaken as Blatter’s “football counsellor” between 1999 and 2002, yet neither the ethics chamber nor the subsequent appeal panels ever saw evidential paperwork.
That was one mystery; the second one was how investigators from the Office of the Swiss Attorney General turned up this issue so conveniently and quickly. Benny Alon, the ticket tout who helped bring down Jerome Valcke, pointed a finger at the now-banned FIFA secretary-general but without any evidence.
With Platini out of the picture, a new president is needed before UEFA seals the new 2019-21 deal with the clubs and the TV companies and sponsors – and with it the usual ongoing power struggle between the big clubs and the federations.
Sabre rattling always includes scare stories about breakaways and super leagues, and it has been no different this time round. Interestingly, these “leaks” play into the hands of Ceferin. While Van Praag and Villar are viewed as members of the western European establishment which needs to keep the big clubs happy, a vote for Ceferin could be seen as a vote for balance and a fair share-out.
As Platini proved when ousting Lennart Johansson and then securing re-election twice over, this is a powerful political argument.
When it comes to political liaisons, however, Villar probably has an advantage, but his electoral situation is complex.
After 26 years running the Spanish federation, the Basque middle man sitting between the rivals from Madrid and Barcelona is regarded as a conservative member of international football’s old guard. But as a senior vice-president of UEFA and FIFA, Villar was an opponent of the investigations into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding farrago and was rapped over the knuckles for it by the ethics committee.
He is also coming under pressure in Spain, particularly from Sports Council president Miguel Cardenal, and faces a contested presidential election immediately after the UEFA vote. To become president of Europe’s federation would offer Villar an escape route from the gathering storm back home.
A serial avoider of the media, Villar has been reticent in offering any reason as to why Europe’s associations should vote for him, apart from political loyalty from Latin quarters. The same cannot be said about Van Praag, who has published a cogent manifesto and can claim to be the ideal candidate to take over in these difficult times.
As a former club president of Ajax, head of the KNVB and successful businessman in his own right, Van Praag has an unparalleled insight into the way the system works. And as the man who stood up, in Sao Paulo in 2014, and told Blatter to his face that it was time to get out, he is also not afraid of a fight.
Van Praag has entitled his manifesto “Building Bridges” and in it he preaches a need for unity at a time when “mutual connection