Blatter and his UEFA counterpart Michel Platini were suspended from all football-related activity by FIFA last December when the adjudicatory chamber of its Ethics Committee ruled a payment of two million Swiss francs, authorised by the Swiss to the former France captain, constituted multiple infringements of the FIFA Code of Ethics. Platini was also banned by Federation Internationale de Football Association because of the payment affair but his appearance at CAS only led to the suspension being cut to four years.
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“I’m very confident”, the 80-year-old Blatter told AFP last week, although his prospects for having the original verdict overturned appear remote.
Both men, who have denied wrongdoing, were initially banned for eight years, later reduced to six by FIFA’s own appeals committee. “We learn to win but also we learn to lose”.
Blatter’s hopes for redemption at CAS are likely hampered by Platini’s failed appeal at the Lausanne-based court.
Blatter had long courted controversy before being removed from the position of president and has since been replaced by former UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino.
But the CAS panel that heard Platini’s appeal backed the original Federation Internationale de Football Association decision that the payment, which was supposedly the balance Platini was owed for consultancy work he did between 1999 and 2002, was not legitimate.
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Throughout the protracted saga, both Blatter and Platini have insisted the payment was part of a legitimate oral contract. “So I think there is a good chance that this panel will believe that there was a contract”.
