Ceferin takes over from French ex-international midfielder Michel Platini, who resigned after being banned from all football-related activity a year ago.
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“My small and handsome Slovenia is very proud about it and I hope that one day you will also be very proud about it”.
But he must also remember he only has his impressive mandate for two and a half years, as he is completing the term started by his disgraced predecessor Michel Platini.
“Like Infantino, Ceferin has risen without trace, yet has beaten Michael van Praag of the Netherlands, whose outspoken criticism of Blatter over the past few years may be regarded as a blot on his company copybook”, she writes.
“Be assured that I have a clear conscience, that I’m convinced I did not make the slightest mistake, and that I’m continuing the legal battle”, Platini told an audience which included FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
He finished his speech by saying: “Friends of football, farewell”.
“I have a very big law firm so I don’t need it [the presidency] for my CV or to get something for me personally”, he said.
Platini and former world football governing body FIFA President Joseph Blatter were both handed eight-year suspensions last December for their role in a major corruption scandal.
Platini was banished along with Blatter over a payment of two million Swiss francs ($A2.8 million) made to the Frenchman by Federation Internationale de Football Association with Blatter’s approval in 2011 for work done a decade earlier.
“There isn’t one football for large nations and one for small nations, there is a single football, a single sport, it doesn’t belong to FIFA or UEFA, it belongs to the whole world”, he said.
Platini said football was “a game rather than a product, a sport rather than a market, a show not a business”.
Aleksander Ceferin has been named as the new president of UEFA following a landslide win at Wednesday’s electoral congress in Athens.
Ceferin, who has been head of the Slovenian football federation only since 2011, added: “We are all exhausted of the current situation and look forward to a normalisation period that will be about positive things, about friendship, about football”. I have no ego issues and I’m not a man of unrealistic promises.
“The wind of change is blowing through European football”.
Ceferin was not a member of UEFA’s executive committee and only hit the spotlight when he announced his intention to run in June.
According to English Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn whether the plan goes ahead will be “the first big decision’ facing Ceferin, who said after the election it would be his top priority”.
The Slovenian did say though that he would look again at the new structure of the European Championship, with matches spread across several countries leading to semi-finals and final in one place, which comes into place in 2020 and was the brainchild of Platini. This a great joy but also a great responsibility.
Van Praag said: “Alex and myself have the same goal – look at our programs”.
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“I was never behind the scenes”, he said.
