Michel Platini and Uefa set tone for challenge to Fifa’s Sepp Blatter

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/mar/24/michel-platini-uefa-fifa-sepp-blatter

Version 0 of 1.

For football’s well-heeled international class of administrators, it is Congress season. That means expensive hotel lobbies, airless conference centres, endless protocol and more ageing men in expensive grey suits than the Harrods menswear department.

Uefa’s version in Vienna had an added frisson because Sepp Blatter, the much criticised and derided Fifa president who nevertheless is set on another four years in charge, entered the lion’s den.

When Blatter first ascended to Fifa’s top job 17 years ago, a recently retired Michel Platini was a key supporter and widely seen as the heir apparent. But in a Shakespearean twist, Platini turned on his former mentor and has been vocal in his view it is time for the 79-year-old to move on.

Having declined the opportunity to take on Blatter for the Fifa presidency and instead bask in the acclamation of the 54 Uefa members as he was re-elected as the head of European football for another four years, Platini is pursuing an Anyone But Blatter strategy.

He had invited the three challengers to Blatter’s grip on power – the Jordanian Prince Ali, the Dutch FA president Michael van Praag and the Portuguese former world footballer of the year Luis Figo – to speak from the stage.

This being the weird, cosseted world of international football administration much was left unsaid. Everything was couched in the deadening language of the international football diplomat.

Even Platini would only go so far as to say it was perhaps time for some “fresh air” at the top table of Fifa. Prince Ali and Figo were careful to pay tribute to the watching septuagenarian.

Prince Ali, the youthful Jordanian royal who has put his head above the parapet, spoke softly and quickly as he delivered a carefully calibrated message pitched more at the other confederation chiefs in the front row than the media at the back of the hall.

Any criticism of the administration was gentle, acknowledging the task for all three challengers is to appeal to the members of the “football family” (to use that hateful phrase) beyond Europe.

“Both inside and outside the football family people have expressed concern about the way Fifa is run,” Prince Ali said. “Around the world there is a real appetite for change. This movement calls for a better Fifa, one based on respect and dignity, admired by our stakeholders, and governed with a spirit of inclusion and transparency.”

All three of Blatter’s rivals and Platini repeatedly returned to the theme of humility and insisted they were not on a mission to impose European dominance on the rest of football, as the Fifa president has repeatedly suggested.

“Certain people are perhaps trying to turn us against each other, seeking to divide and rule. They are trying to isolate the supposedly arrogant and selfish Europeans – again, do not believe everything you hear,” Platini said in his address. “Yes, we know we are in a privileged position. Yes, we know we make mistakes and are not necessarily any better than anyone else.”

Only Van Praag took the fight to Blatter, probably figuring he has little to lose.

“I simply cannot accept that we leave Fifa in its current shape for the next generation. The beautiful heritage of international football has been tarnished by accusations of corruption, bribery, nepotism and waste of money,” he said.

“The current state of disarray requires a change of leadership. I cannot look away – it is the responsibility of our generation to clean up the mess.”

David Gill, the former Manchester United chief executive who was the unseen power behind the throne in the second half of the Sir Alex Ferguson era, was elected onto the Fifa executive committee.

He had previously made it clear he found the idea of working alongside Blatter about as welcome as standing in the Kop with a Manchester United scarf but Gill has slipped into his role like a well-fitted blazer and was talked into taking the Fifa position by Platini.

If the upper echelons of Fifa House need to be thoroughly cleansed, Uefa is not immune from its own controversies.

On one side of Platini sat Mario Lefkaritis, the Cypriot who is the chair of Uefa’s finance committee. He has been forced to deny allegations of engaging in a multi-million pound land deal with a Qatari company before giving his vote to the Gulf state’s World Cup bid in 2010.

On the other sat Ángel María Villar Llona, the Spanish FA chief who was re-elected to the Fifa executive committee by his fellow Uefa members. Villar Llona was accused of trading votes with Qatar in 2010 and is under investigation from the Fifa ethics committee.

Platini has been under pressure over the past four years, forced time and again to explain why he voted for Qatar given a previous meeting with the then French president and the Emir.

For all Uefa’s foibles – and it was easy to see here why some worry about its expansionist tendencies and interventionist culture – it operates smoothly and, for the most part, sensibly – not something you could say about their Swiss neighbours at Fifa House.

This was Platini in relaxed mode, master of all he surveyed inside the cavernous Vienna conference hall that housed the Citizen Kane style set that is de rigueur on these occasions. “To be at the head of this organisation, I have the smile of a happy president,” he said, delivering the obligatory clumsy analogy about wearing the captain’s armband.

The Frenchman’s demeanour contrasted sharply with the irritation betrayed by Blatter in Zurich last Friday as he dealt with the self-inflicted problems that continue to pile up at his door. With two months to go and the four candidates now moving on to Asia and Africa as those confederations hold their own talking shops, it is to be hoped this slow burn Fifa presidential race will yet catch fire.