FIFA Bans Blatter And Platini For Eight Years

Sani Lulu, also a former NFA President said that this was part of the change that all football stakeholders had been calling for in FIFA.

The FIFA ethics committee Monday announced its decision to ban Blatter and the European head of soccer Michel Platini after finding them both guilty of breaches involving a $2 million payment made to Platini in 2011.

The FIFA official statement reads: “The adjudicatory chamber of the Ethics Committee chaired by Mr Hans-Joachim Eckert has banned Mr Joseph S. Blatter, President of FIFA, for eight years and Mr Michel Platini, Vice-President and member of the Executive Committee of FIFA and President of UEFA, for eight years from all football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) on a national and worldwide level”.

The 36-year-old footballer won two Premier League titles and the League Cup with Chelsea, lifted the League Cup with Blackburn Rovers and helped Fulham reach the 2010 Europa League final.

“He’s a little more expensive than I am”, Blatter said.

It added that, by failing to place FIFA’s interests first and abstain from doing anything which could be contrary to FIFA’s interests, Blatter and Platini violated their fiduciary duty to the organization; and their actions “did not show commitment to an ethical attitude” and demonstrated “an abusive execution” of their positions.

In October sponsors Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Visa, and Anheuser-Busch called for Blatter to step down, and later called for independent oversight of FIFA’s reform process in December.

Patel said Blatter had served the Pacific well and that for the local body alone had provided enough assistance to help the growth of the sport in Fiji. There doesn’t seem to be any way you can get to them because of all those big corporations behind him. “Eight years is like a death sentence”.

“For me, the tickets had nothing to do with it. It was his personal attitude”.

Valcke sent the WSJ an email denying these claims from Blatter, saying he hadn’t talked to his former colleague since September 19 and that he never had aspirations to be Federation Internationale de Football Association president.

Blatter, left, and Platini.

“It has been rigged to tarnish my name by bodies I know well and who for me are bereft of all credibility or legitimacy”. “These are confederation activities over which we have no control”.

“Fifa has had links with the university for 10 years through its Fifa International Masters in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport. It doesn’t bother me to talk about the past, because the past was more brilliant for me than the future”.