Michel Platini will resign as Uefa president after failing to have his six-year ban from football overturned.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced the 60-year-old’s ban to four-years yesterday but Platini, who has served as president since 2007, will now step down.
A statement from the Frenchman’s lawyers said: “Michel Platini announces that he will resign as president of Uefa at the organisation’s next congress.”
It added Platini was “deeply disappointed” with the ruling, which he claimed was “an injustice”.
Platini was originally given an eight-year ban along with former Fifa president Sepp Blatter over a £2million payment, worth £1.25million at the time, which Blatter made to him in 2011.
It was claimed that the payment was for consultancy work between 1998 and 2002.
An earlier appeal saw the ban reduced to six years by a Fifa appeal panel in February on account of services to football, before it was today shortened to half of its original duration.
But the Lausanne-based court has backed FIFA’s ruling that the payment between Platini and Blatter represented a “conflict of interests” and said “it was not convinced by the legitimacy of this payment.”
Today’s ruling means Platini will be unable to attend this summer’s Euro 2016 tournament in his native France.
The outcome of Blatter’s appeal is not yet known.
— CAS
