Madrid (EFE).- Alexander Ceferin will be re-elected this Wednesday as UEFA president at the 47th Congress of the organization in Lisbon, where he is once again running as the only candidate, the same as he was four years ago in Rome, after his first election on September 14 of 2016.
The Slovenian leader faces his third term with the defense of European football, unity, solidarity and sporting merit as his flag, after a mandate conditioned by the pandemic, the Super League and the war in Ukraine and with changes in competitions since 2024 , such as the Champions League, which will increase its teams to 36, or the League of Nations, which will have a new knockout round.
Since his arrival in office due to the crisis that triggered the FIFA corruption case in 2015, Ceferin has increased his authority in Europe and international football in seven years, with firm actions and messages against the “egoism” that for him it means the Super League or the “strong condemnation of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine”.
To this were added immediate decisions. He moved the last Champions League final from St. Petersburg to Paris, 24 hours after Russia entered Ukraine; three days later he broke the contract with Gazprom, the Russian energy company to which UEFA had been linked since 2012, and clubs and teams from Russia and Belarus were excluded from their competitions.
He showed the same firmness when FIFA defended a World Cup every two years, which Ceferin described as “a populist project that would destroy football”, and especially with the Super League, his main workhorse since it burst onto the scene before UEFA opened its annual congress on April 20, 2021.
The Super League gap
Statements such as that “the Super League is the result of the greed, selfishness and narcissism of some”, or that its defenders “believe that they are great and untouchable, but if today they are giants it is thanks in part to UEFA, which for 60 years has protected the ideal of competitions, they are based on sporting merit” have been a constant.
The case awaits the decision of the Court of Justice of the EU, scheduled for this spring, which will be binding for the Commercial Court number 17 of Madrid to resolve the complaint that the promoters of the Super League filed against UEFA and FIFA for abuse of a dominant position against European regulations.
Before the breach of the Super League, which is backed by Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, Ceferin had to react to the pandemic, with difficult decisions such as postponing the 2020 Euro Cup until 2021, releasing €236.5 million to help the federations and €70 million to the clubs. He recently celebrated that these have increased revenue by 4.6% on average.
Solidarity is one of the principles to which Ceferin appeals in the decisions of the organization, which, through its Foundation, has created an aid fund for Ukraine and has donated €200,000 for the victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
Hollow for women’s football
Women’s football and the environment also have a place in her diary. Four years ago, UEFA launched “Time for Action”, its first strategy for the former to reach the figure of 2.5 million practitioners in 2024 and in December 2021 it approved its 2030 Football Sustainability Strategy, to respect the human rights and the environment in the context of European football.
Born in Grosuplje (1967), some twenty kilometers southeast of Ljubljana, Ceferin, a footballer and lawyer by profession, became the seventh president of UEFA on September 14, 2016, in an election forced by FIFA’s disqualification of French Michel Platini, who had been re-elected for a third term at UEFA in March 2015. Platini was acquitted by the Swiss court last summer.
Ceferin then defeated the Dutchman Michel Van Praag by 42 votes to 13 and from his discreet position became undisputed and re-elected by acclamation on February 7, 2019.
He came to office with a reputation for competence and integrity, above all for continuing his father’s tradition of defending without cost victims without resources of human rights violations, as he did when in 2006 he represented a Roma family expelled from their town of origin in Slovenia due to pressure from neighbors.
Last year he recounted that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he welcomed a Ukrainian player into his home and spent two days on the phone trying to help footballers and coaches leave the country to flee a war in which he believes that “no one will be the winner and”, he thinks, “we will all lose in one way or another”.