Aleksander Ceferin, a hitherto largely unknown Slovenian lawyer, has been voted president of European football’s governing body (Uefa), succeeding the disgraced Michel Platini.
The position, one of the most powerful in the game, became vacant in May after Platini failed in his bid to overturn a four-year ban in the courts following his dramatic fall from grace over a disputed payment from former Fifa president Sepp Blatter.
Ceferin will now take over the remaining two and half years of the Frenchman’s four year term after defeating 68-year-old Dutch FA president Michael van Praag by 42 votes to 13.
The genesis of Ceferin’s bid to become president was believed to be a series of meetings in March in Slovenia and Croatia between around 15 of the smaller members of Uefa to decide on a credible candidate to stand up for their interests.
However, he was also quickly backed by larger countries including Italy, France, Germany, Ireland and Russia. In his speech at Uefa’s extraordinary congress in Athens, he directed his pitch to the smaller and medium-sized nations that make up the majority of UEFA’s membership.
Many of them are angry at the recent deal Champions League negotiated by the Uefa executive committee with the continent’s biggest clubs amid saber rattling over a breakaway.
Ceferin, a 48-year-old black belt in karate and head of one of Slovenia’s largest law firms, promised that his most important priority would be “good governance and transparency”.
“Some people may have said I’m not a leader. You can say that I’m young and inexperienced but I honestly think it’s disrespectful to all the presidents of small and medium-sized federations who every year have to do more with less,” said Ceferin, who has been head of the Slovenian FA since 2011.
“What I know is that I’m a team player, a man of conviction, a passionate man and a man of his word. I am not a showman and I’m not a man of unrealistic promises.”
Ceferin, who denied allegations that those lobbying on his behalf had promised inducements in return for votes and that Fifa president Gianni Infantino had backed his campaign in contravention of the rules, invoked a phrase used by the Scottish former Uefa general secretary David Taylor to describe his priorities.
“We should stop with politics, plots, lack of transparency, self interest. It’s football first,” he insisted. But given the scandal-hit turbulence of world football governance over the past two years, Ceferin will have to go a long way to convince outsiders that he can deliver on those promises.
After winning a landslide victory, Ceferin said: “It’s a great honour but at the same time a great responsibility. It means a lot to me. My family is very proud about it, my small and beautiful Slovenia is very proud about it and I hope one day you will be very proud of me too.”
Ceferin defeated the only other candidate, the former Ajax chairman Van Praag, who had promised a more overtly reformist agenda.
“For too long football has not been on the agenda enough, football has been politicised. It is about time UEFA truly listens to the associations and does something with their proposals,” said Van Praag in his pre-vote speech.
The only other candidate, the controversial Spanish acting Uefa president Angel Maria Villar Llona, pulled out of the contest earlier this month. The English FA was among the handful of Uefa’s 55 members that voted for Van Praag.
Ceferin, who becomes Uefa’s seventh president in his 62-year history, is a member of Fifa’s disciplinary committee and a vice-chairman of Uefa’s legal committee.
But despite the talk of reform and transparency, the sense that football’s power brokers have reverted to business as usual was exacerbated by the fact that Fifa’s ethics committee gave Platini special dispensation to make a farewell speech on “humanitarian” grounds.
The Frenchman, banned from all football activity for four years over a £1.35m “disloyal payment” received from former Fifa president Sepp Blatter, said he would continue to fight to clear his name.
“I have a clear conscience. I am certain not to have made any mistake and I will continue to fight this in the courts. I’d like to thank all of you who have had the courage to support me in the last few months,” he said.
“I’d like to thank you for these nine years. I think we did a great job. I hope you enjoyed it and are proud of what we achieved. I’m proud. That’s why I wanted to say goodbye and thank you. Friends of football, farewell.”
