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Suspended Blatter Says Won’t Go Down Without a Fight: Paper

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) became the latest regional body to demand an emergency meeting of the FIFA executive after the suspension of Blatter, UEFA president Michel Platini and FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke.

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Platini said last week: “Mr Blatter informed me when I started my role as his advisor that it was not initially possible to pay the totality of my salary because of FIFA’s financial situation at that time”.

“It seems to me that UEFA is trying to fudge it by saying they are not appointing someone in (Platini’s) place”, British lawyer Nick De Marco, a specialist in sports law, told The Associated Press.

But ethics committee spokesman Andreas Bantel said Blatter, 79, had been given the chance to put his case on October 1.

Issa Hayatou of Cameroon, the 69-year-old head of the Confederation of African Football, was named FIFA’s acting president on Thursday.

That deadline could pose problems for Platini if he remains under a provisional ban.

The governing body soon issued an official communique to announce that the 79-year-old Blatter had been “relieved of all his duties”.

Secret internal FIFA documents obtained by the MoS show Blatter knew of alleged corruption involving Warner and kept it to himself.

Meanwhile, Platini was also questioned over claims that he received a “disloyal payment” of 1.35 million pounds from the controversial president in 2011, though both of them have denied charges.

The French football federation, which has been supporting Platini since the accusations surfaced, said it is considering appealing his suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Both have appealed against their suspensions to Fifa’s appeals committee, chaired by the former Bermudan attorney general and president of the Bermuda FA, Larry Mussenden.

Contractually, Platini was to be paid 300,000 Swiss francs per year for this advisory job, traveling the globe as Blatter mentored him in the deal making required to establish a powerbase.

The South Americans’ action intensifies the crisis which FIFA finds itself in, and a meeting of UEFA’s 54 member associations which has been called for next Thursday in Nyon, Switzerland.

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FIGC President Carlo Tavecchio says it’s “not easy” to decide whether or not to support Michel Platini.

Issa-Hayatou