UEFA, the Union of the European Football Associations, supports its President Michel Platini even though the former football star was banned by FIFA from all football activity for 90 days.
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The news came just hours after a close associate of Blatter, Klaus Stöhlker, seemed to indicate that the Federation Internationale de Football Association boss would take no action against his 90-day provisional suspension, saying this would make “no sense”.
It did not take long for the quartet to react to the verdicts, with Blatter’s lawyers accusing the ethics committee of failing to “follow the code of ethics and disciplinary code” because he had not been heard in person.
Platini, hit with the same suspension on Thursday, also “had the very same rights” at an interview on the same day, Bantel said.
Blatter, as well as presidential candidate Michel Platini and general secretary Jerome Valcke, was handed the punishment on Thursday following approval by Fifa’s adjudicatory chamber of a recommendation made by the organisation’s Ethics Committee.
Yet Blatter’s return will not be easy, for not only has his reputation suffered severe damage, he is also under criminal investigation from the Swiss attorney general.
The UEFA statement stressed that the executive committee “expressed its full confidence” in Platini and will meet next Thursday in Nyon. Allegedly, they received 50 million United States dollars in bribes.
The immediate case against them will nearly certainly focus exclusively on the payment of two million Swiss francs, which Blatter made to Platini nine years after the Frenchman finished working as a consultant for his former mentor.
But it is insider Issa Hayatou, the African football confederation boss, who has himself faced and denied corruption allegations in the past, who will act as interim FIFA president. “I don’t know why every time America sneeze everybody feel you have to catch a cold”, Warner told reporters at a hotel in Port of Spain where he was a guest speaker at a convention of teachers.
Elections to replace Blatter (left) were due to be held early next year but Hershman says the process must be accelerated.
Meanwhile, Fifa’s executive committee is likely to decide next week whether to hold an emergency meeting following the suspension of president Blatter, a spokesperson said on Friday. The deadline is October 26.
Football’s sleaze-tarnished governing body FIFA faces months of turmoil over the election of a new president, after incumbent Sepp Blatter was suspended over a criminal probe.
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In 2011, he was sanctioned by the worldwide Olympic Committee over taking cash payments from a sports marketing firm.
