Michel Platini lashes out at ‘clowns’ and ‘worthless judges’ over ban

Former Uefa president Michel Platini has attacked the "clowns" and "worthless judges" who have banned him from football and told a French magazine that he will eventually be cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.

Platini and former Fifa boss Sepp Blatter were banned for eight years by Fifa's ethics committee in December 2015, although a Fifa appeal body reduced that to six years, for a "disloyal payment" of €1.8 million paid by Blatter to Platini.

The pair then made separate appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which upheld Blatter’s sanction but cut a further two years off Platini’s.

That was not enough, however, to enable Platini to contest the race to succeed Blatter as Fifa supremo in 2016 – as the former friends had planned – and the ex-France and Juventus star has spent the last two years brooding about the injustice he believes he has been dealt.

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Speaking to Marianne magazine, the 62-year-old said: “I can not accept losing when I did not do anything. Who are these clowns that prevent me from working?”

He described the judges at CAS and Fifa as “worthless” and insisted he was innocent.

The various allegations of corruption at world football’s governing body, including the Blatter-Platini payment, are the subject of a criminal investigation by the Swiss public prosecutor.

Platini, though, is convinced he will be vindicated by this investigation and the real story will emerge.

“I’m waiting for the big decisions, the real ones, those of the Swiss public prosecutor, who has made an investigation into this allegedly disloyal payment,” he told the magazine.

“But it was only a plot so that I would not be president of Fifa. My case is just beginning.”