Sports

Ceferin emerges as new UEFA president

Published

8 years ago

September 14, 2016

UEFA elected Aleksander Čeferin as its new UEFA president on Wednesday, filling the office previously occupied by Michel Platini.

Čeferin, 48, won 42 of the 55 votes at the Extraordinary UEFA Congress in Athens, beating Michael van Praag of the Netherlands.

He will complete Platini’s four-year presidential term through 2019. Platini resigned in May after he was banned by FIFA for taking a $2 million improper payment.

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“Some people may have said that I am not a leader, that I am too young and too inexperienced to become the next UEFA president,” Ceferin said, according to the Associated Press.

“It’s not because you repeat again and again, loud and clear ‘I am a leader’ that you are a leader. If you have to do it you are probably not a leader. You can say that I am young and experienced but I honestly think it disrespectful for all small and medium-sized federations who, 365 days a year, have to do more with less.

Čeferin, head of the Slovenian federation, is the seventh president of Europe’s governing soccer body.

Čeferin is a lawyer by trade and says that working with Slovenia’s soccer federation required him to be “creative, strong and inspiring.”

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