Michel Platini’s hopes of succeeding Sepp Blatter as president of Fifa were dealt a severe blow when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rejected his attempt to have an initial 90-day ban from all football activities overturned.

The decision means that Platini will not even be able to attend this evening’s draw for a European Championships that was supposed to serve as a sort of triumphant homecoming for the 60-year-old who led France to victory in the tournament on home soil back in 1984 when he scored a record nine goals in the course of his side’s five games.

More significantly, it appears to leave his Fifa ambitions at the mercy of that organisation’s ethics committee the motives of which he has previously called into question. The case against Platini, which relates to a payment of €1.83 million to him by Fifa in the run up to Blatter’s re-election in 2011, will be heard next Friday, a day after Blatter’s hearing, and both men are expected to learn their fate on Monday week.

Favourable action

The federation’s investigatory chamber, which brought the charges, has called for life bans to be imposed on both men but almost any sort of punishment would leave Platini depending on swift and more favourable action by CAS to give him any chance of even getting his name on the ballot for the February 26th election in Zurich.

The only favour that CAS did the Frenchman was to warn the ethics committee against simply extending the temporary ban by another 45 days, something that it would have been entitled to do. This was hailed as a success by Platini’s legal team although it is actually irrelevant if the committee sticks to the timetable it has set for itself.

If he cannot run for the Fifa job in February then Gianni Infantino will be Uefa’s candidate and it may be that the Swiss lawyer might stand a better chance of uniting Europe’s various associations at this stage than the Frenchman who, whatever the outcome of his case, has been severely damaged by everything that has happened.

‘Complicated’

“It’s complicated for Michel,” said Infantino, “and it’s complicated for the institution (Uefa) but the institution is strong and Michel is strong so we move ahead.”

Infantino who, amid reports that Platini was in Paris in anticipation of being cleared to play a role at the draw, claimed not even to know where the Frenchman was, added that the European federation had “no influence” over the process but suggested that Platini still enjoys significant support from within Uefa.

Still, the organisation did indeed appear to be getting on with things in his absence. A meeting of its executive committee, which he was also prevented from attending, decided to hold an extraordinary congress of its own on the day before Fifa’s in Zurich in February and to push its regular congress back from March to May.

It could be that by the time delegates from its member associations across Europe are meeting in Budapest in early summer, Infantino will be leading the world game, those present are electing Platini’s successor and the Frenchman is entirely out in the cold.