Michel Platini – Declan Hill – Investigative Journalist & Academic

09MayMay 9, 2016

Requiem for a Football Legend: Michel Platini

So he is gone. Michel Platini's drink at the last chance legal saloon of the Council for the Arbitration of Sport (CAS - the supreme court for sports) just ended. Here is the background. Michel Platini “advised” Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA, between 1999-2002. Just before the 2011 FIFA Presidential election, where Michel Platini chose not to run against Blatter, he received a payment of 2 million Swiss Francs from Blatter. Their story was that this payment was in recompense...

Potemkin Villages, Scapegoats and Fake Qatari Fans: 4 Things We Learned From This Week in International Sports Corruption

On the eve of FIFA’s executive committee meeting that is expected to rubber-stamp the decision of their ‘ethics committee’ (sic) to ban Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini from the international football world, four points: 1) Is the internal FIFA reform - a believable process? No. It is a Potemkin village of a battle against corruption. From far away, it seems good. Once you get close, the obvious conflicts of interests emerge. What is occurring now is a frantic effort by FIFA...

Requiem for a FIFA President & More to Come

See below from last week, when a number of people close to the investigations showed me some of the documentation. The other stories from FIFA sources are, now, legendary. When Blatter heard of the arrests at the five-star hotel in the spring, FIFA-insiders claim he hid for several hours, mobile phone switched off in case someone came for him. Here is the official statement from Swiss Prosecutors: Criminal proceedings against the President of FIFA Bern, 25.09.2015 – The Office of the Attorney...