In his acceptance speech Ceferin said: “It’s a great honour but, at the same time, great responsibility”.
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Ceferin overwhelmingly beat Dutchman Michael van Praag, the only other candidate, by 42 votes to 13.
“I have seen first hand the great work that Aleksander has done for football and we have been very impressed with him so far”, John Delaney said.
He also vowed to reopen negotiations over the allocation of four guaranteed group stage places in the Champions League to England, Germany, Italy and Spain from the 2018/19 season.
The 49-year-old succeeds former France player Michel Platini, who resigned after being banned from all football activity last year for taking a payment of two million Swiss francs ($2m) from FIFA in 2011.
Platini said he had fought as UEFA leader to preserve football from “all the excesses that its planetary success has engendered”. It was without leadership for some time and that was a problem dealing with this. I think we did a great job.
The Slovenian lawyer’s campaign to replace the disgraced former UEFA chief Michel Platini had gathered momentum in recent days.
Platini told the congress: “Football is a game before a product, a sport before a market, a show before a market …”
Ceferin was not a member of UEFA’s executive committee and only hit the spotlight when he announced his intention to run in June.
“It is, by any measure, a meteoric rise to power”.
Slovenian football federation head Aleksander Ceferin was elected on Wednesday new president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
“This will be a thorny task”.
Clubs which qualify for the annual Champions League tournament in Europe gain millions of dollars in revenue through increased television coverage and ticket sales, on top of awards provided by UEFA itself.
He added: “It’s one country, one vote, so it would be sensible of him to reach out to the bigger nations as well as the smaller nations”.
Aleksander Ceferin, speaks during a press conference after he was elected the new president of UEFA, in Athens, on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016.
“Whether I want it or not, I will have to deal with it and that will be the first thing to deal with”, the new president said.
“I have a clear conscience,”he said”.
“It’s not because you repeat again and again, loud and clear “I am a leader” that you are a leader”.
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Platini’s suspension, which was lowered to four years from six, was in relation to a $2 million (£1.3m) disloyal payment from former Federation Internationale de Football Association chief Sepp Blatter in 2011.
