Platini to attend Uefa Congress
DISGRACED former Uefa ppresident Michel Platini will attendnd the Uefa Congress in Athens next week at the invitationnvitation of the European football’s governingng body, but paying his own way for a finalal farewell.
Platinii “will travel there by his own meansans and will not give a press conference”nce” at the Congress, when the Uefaa executive committee will vote on his successor, a member of his entourageurage told AFP.
The formerrmer French international, a three-timeme European footballer of the year, is the key figure in the scandal that broughtught down Fifa president Sepp Blatter.
Platinii was on the receiving end of the suspect 2 million Swiss franc ($2 million, 1.8 millionion euros) payment that Blatter authoriseded in 2011.
Fifa hasas said the payment amounteded to an ethics violationn and has suspendeded both men for six years.ears.
Blatterr and Platini insist it wasas a l e g i t i mmaa t e paymentt for an unpaidnpaid balance that Fifa oweded the Uefa boss for consultingg work done a decade earlier. Platini lost his CAS appeal against his own Fifa ban earlier this year, but the court cut his suspension to four years. In Athens, the 55 Uefa member federations will vote between two candidates to succeed Platini : AleAleksanderksander Ceferin of Slovenia and Dutchman Michael van Praag.— AFP.