Platini to attend UEFA Congress in Athens

Disgraced former UEFA president Michel Platini will attend the UEFA Congress in Athens next week at the invitation of the European football’s governing body, but paying his own way for a final farewell.

Platini “will travel there by his own means and will not give a press conference” at the Congress, when the UEFA executive committee will vote on his successor, a member of his entourage told AFP.

The former French international, a three-time European footballer of the year, is the key figure in the scandal that brought down FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

Platini was on the receiving end of the suspect 2 million Swiss franc ($2 million, 1.8 million euros) payment that Blatter authorised in 2011.

FIFA has said the payment amounted to an ethics violation and has suspended both men for six years.

Blatter and Platini insist it was a legitimate payment for an unpaid balance that FIFA owed the UEFA boss for consulting work done a decade earlier. Platini lost his CAS appeal against his own FIFA ban earlier this year, but the court cut his suspension to four years.

In Athens, the 55 UEFA member federations will vote between two candidates to succeed Platini: Aleksander Ceferin of Slovenia and Dutchman Michael van Praag.