New UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin has
been a high profile lawyer in his native Slovenia but had no record in
football until he took over his country’s football federation in 2011.
The 48-year-old father of three has
often appeared on Slovenian television speaking for high-profile
defendants represented by his family law firm, never losing his temper
and always keeping the image of someone who has the situation under
control.
UEFA will be a severe test of his skills
as it seeks to overcome the shock of losing ex-leader Michel Platini,
implicated in FIFA’s corruption scandals, and facing challenges to its
prized Champions League.
Ceferin already surprised people when he
took over the presidency of Slovenia’s football association, the NZS,
in 2011 and quickly joined FIFA’s disciplinary committee and UEFA’s
legal committee.
Besides reorganizing the NZS, Ceferin is
also credited with bringing together the former Yugoslavian republics
in 2015 to make them a football politics bloc.
“I was the first to bring to the same
table the national associations of the former state (Yugoslavia), that
we adopted a common positions and presented them to UEFA and by doing so
improved our reputation within UEFA,” he told state television in a
recent interview.
Ceferin really emerged as a growing
power in international sports in June when he announced his bid to
become UEFA president with the backing of over a dozen European
associations ranging from Russia to Scandinavian countries.
He says running for UEFA’s top job was not his idea.
The football associations of Sweden,
Norway, Denmark and Finland, with which he shares many ideas on
reforming European football, urged him to run.
“When that thing (scandal) happened to
Michel Platini, the Scandinavians called me and told me ‘we believe you
would be the perfect candidate for president'”, Ceferin told Ljubljana’s
daily Delo.
Platini who only officially resigned in
May, had not been in the post since October last year over revelations
of a $2 million payment from FIFA in 2011 for work carried out a decade
earlier.
After the Scandinavian call, Ceferin
could not turn back and says he has even paid for almost one hundred
flights to lobby for support with national associations.
“I’m little known in these circles so I have to introduce myself to each one of them,” Ceferin said recently.
“People want changes, they want a younger man with new ideas who has not been around since forever,” Ceferin added.
As a lawyer, he has cautiously abstained
from criticising the handling of UEFA’s affairs but this month he lost
his temper when a Norwegian paper accused him of being “the (FIFA)
president’s man” in the race, an allegation he attributed to his main
rival, the Dutch Michael van Praag.
“You can judge yourself who’s using the
old (UEFA) methods. The one that meets football associations and
presents them his programme to get their support or the one that invents
stories to compromise the elections and desperately get at least some
support,” Ceferin told Slovenian state.
Slovenia, a country of two million, has
been organising its own football leagues since it declared independence
in 1991 and its national team’s greatest success was to qualify to the
2002 World Championship in South Korea.
AFP
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