As a lawyer, he has cautiously abstained from criticising the handling of UEFA’s affairs but this month he lost his temper when a Norwegian paper accused him of being “the (FIFA) president’s man” in the race, an allegation he attributed to his main rival, the Dutch Michael van Praag. “We have to speak and have dialogue with the clubs and I think it can be solved.”

 Ceferin, who has been the head of the Football Association of Slovenia since 2011, takes on the remainder of Platini’s term of office, until 2019. The 61-year-old Frenchman has been banned from all football-related activities since December for receiving what Swiss investigators called a 'disloyal payment' from former FIFA president Sepp Blatter in 2011, but was given special permission to say goodbye to his former colleagues by FIFA's ethics committee. “You are going to continue this beautiful mission without me, for reasons that I do not wish to come back on.”

 FIFA’s ethics committee handed down an initial eight-year ban to both Blatter and Platini, who have always denied wrongdoing.
Members of European football's governing body, UEFA, elect Aleksander Čeferin, president of the Football Association of Slovenia since 2011, president of UEFA. Čeferin will serve the remainder of former UEFA president Michel Platini's term of office, until 2019, who was banned by the FIFA Ethics Committee for corruption last year.