Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini expected to lose appeals against eight-year bans
Monday 22 February 2016 09:14, UK
The eight-year suspensions handed to Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini are expected to be upheld ahead of this week's FIFA presidential election.
FIFA president Blatter and UEFA president Platini both conducted appeal hearings last week after being sanctioned last year.
Platini was found to have accepted a disloyal payment of £1.35m from Blatter in 2011. Ethics judges ruled that Blatter had broken FIFA Code of Ethics rules on conflicts of interest and Platini had broken rules on conflict of interest and loyalty.
The pair received fines following the verdict and were also handed respective eight-year bans from football.
However, both are expected to take their case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, should their appeals fail.
FIFA has been rocked by widespread allegations of corruption and bribery. Seven officials were detained by Swiss police in May, while two more were arrested in November as part of an FBI led investigation into the scandal.
A replacement for Blatter is expected to be announced this Friday when the FIFA presidential elections come to an end.
Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain is the current favourite to succeed Blatter, ahead of UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino, who the FA chose to support last week.
Former FIFA vice-president Prince Ali of Jordan, Frenchman Jerome Champagne and South African Tokyo Sexwale are also up for election but considered outsiders.
Salman's bid has been hampered by allegations of human rights abuses during pro-democracy demonstrations in Bahrain in 2011, although he denies any involvement.
Meanwhile, Infantino has close links to Platini, and at one point even announced his intention to drop out of the race, should to former UEFA president be allowed to stand.
FA chief executive Martin Glenn says FIFA needs to elect the right candidate and cannot afford another controversy.
"There are a lot of good things that FIFA does, so even if it was wound up and called something else, it would still be doing a lot of good things it's doing today," Glenn told The Guardian.
"People love the World Cup, so we want the World Cup to be run well. And how would it be run well?
"You can speculate, if there was another car crash at FIFA, football would survive, and it will survive by people organising it differently."
