Platini talks of plots, clowns, worthless judges and the all-conquering power of TV

April 3 – Michel Platini, not so long ago one of the most powerful men in world football who had aspirations to take over from Sepp Blatter as FIFA president until both were banned for ethics violations, has branded those who threw him out as “clowns” and “worthless judges” and told a French magazine that he will eventually be cleared of any wrongdoing.

Like Blatter, the former UEFA president was originally banned for eight years by FIFA’s ethics committee in December 2015 – before FIFA’s appeals body reduced both men’s penalty to six – for that infamous “disloyal payment” of CHF 2 million paid to him by Blatter.

The pair then made separate appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which upheld Blatter’s sanction but cut a further two years off Platini’s. That was not enough, however, to enable Platini to contest the election to succeed Blatter in 2016 or to stop the Frenchman trying to clear his name.

The former three-time European Footballer of the Year has spent the last two years protesting about the injustice he perceives he was dealt.

Speaking to Marianne magazine, Platini described the judges at CAS and FIFA who assessed his case as “worthless” and still maintained he was innocent.

“I cannot accept losing when I did not do anything. Who are these clowns that prevent me from working?”

Platini, who was also a FIFA vice-president, is convinced he will ultimately be exonerated and says he will now take his appeal to European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.

“I’m waiting for the big decisions, the real ones, those of the Swiss public prosecutor, who has made an investigation into this allegedly disloyal payment. It was a plot so that I would not be president of FIFA. My case is just beginning and I will be proved right.”

Asked if he would ever return to football, he added: “I would want to become head of a television channel because then I would have more power than the UEFA president: it’s television which decide the day of the match, the time of the match and now they will even referee the match [with VAR].”

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