December 13 – UEFA sources have said that if president Aleksander Ceferin decided to run for a third full term, the confederation’s statutes might not necessarily need to be changed to make that possible.
Former Manchester United president David Gill, objected to a proposal to change the wording of the statutes at a UEFA executive committee meeting last week, arguing that Ceferin will have served his time as UEFA president and that he shouldn’t be allowed to run for a fourth term. The counter argument is that under the statute reform Ceferin has not had three terms in post but only two with his first election having been outside the new term rules later introduced, and that it was not in any case a full term.
There is an irony in Gill’s protest. Ceferin was elected in September 2016 as UEFA president to complete the term of banned Michel Platini – he was subsequently re-elected for full terms in 2019 and 2023.
Gill was first elected to UEFA’s executive committee in 2013 and is a UEFA vice president and treasurer of the organisation. He is now in his eleventh year having been re-elected in 2021 and still has time to run until 2025, though it looks like his term will likely end with rumours that England will not support his renewed candidacy.
Spanish newspaper Marca reports sources close to Ceferin who have indicated that he is currently only thinking short term and has not decided on whether he will run for a further term.
The UEFA sources also point out that come 2027 the election is an open process and anyone qualified and with the required support can run for the presidency.
One challenger for the post will likely be Romania’s Razvan Burleanu who has worked his way rapidly up the political pole with a block of Eastern European support. Aged 39, Burleanu has been president of the Romanian federation since 2014 and since 2021 has been a UEFA representative on FIFA’s Council. It is not clear whether Gill has become a supporter of Burleanu’s ambitions.
The UEFA article that Gill is leading the protest against has been in place as provisional since 2021 and will be reaffirmed next year. It says: “Mandates completed before July 1, 2017 will not be taken into account for the purposes of the term limitsestablished in article 22.1 “.
That means that the first term of two and a half years will not count for Ceferín and he would be able run again. Before then Ceferin will have his hands full battling the ambition of FIFA who are pushing to eat UEFA’s commercial lunch, and Europe’s biggest clubs whose voracious appetite for money only seems to get bigger. It is that club world that Gill emerged from to take his position on UEFA’s executive committee back in 2013, and one that has benefitted significantly from his time in post.
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