By Andrew Warshaw
August 25 – Banned former FIFA president Sepp Blatter made his long-awaited appearance before sport’s highest tribunal, the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS), today in a last-ditch appeal to clear his name.
“I do hope it will be positive for me,” Blatter, who resigned only four days into his fifth term in June 2015, told reporters ahead of the hearing before a three-man panel, expected to last several hours, over his six-year ban from the sport.
Whatever the evidence presented, the verdict will not be known for several weeks and could technically be further challenged at the Swiss supreme court. But Blatter, now in his 80s and winding down after 18 years at the head of FIFA, made it clear he would not take his case that far even though he denies any wrongdoing in authorising a $2 million payment to Michel Platini in 2011.
Both insist the money was the balance Platini was owed for uncontracted consultancy work he did between 1999-2002 in advising Blatter but FIFA’s ethics committee judged the deal, which was purely oral and not recorded in the FIFA files, was a conflict of interest and initially banned the pair for eight years, reduced to six by the FIFA appeals committee.
The so-called “disloyal payment” led Blatter to be placed under investigation for criminal mismanagement by Swiss federal prosecutors last September, an investigation that is ongoing.
In May, Platini had his sentence further reduced by CAS to four years but it was not the outcome he was hoping for, effectively ending his own political career by scuppering his hopes of replacing Blatter as FIFA president and wrecking his chances of continuing in charge of UEFA. The Frenchman is understood to be considering going to the civil courts but Blatter, who could also end up with the same four-year sanction, is unlikely to go down the same path.
“We are football players, we learned to win but also we learned to lose and it will not be the end of the world,” Blatter said outside CAS headquarters in Lausanne even though he now risks never being named as FIFA honorary president.
Blatter nevertheless said he hoped the CAS panel “will understand that the payment made to Platini was really a debt that we had against him. This is a principle, if you have debts you pay them.”
“My name wouldn’t be Sepp Blatter if I didn’t have faith, if I wasn’t optimistic. I will accept the verdict because, in football, we learn to win, this is easy, but we also learn to lose.”
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