“It means a lot to me, it’s a great honor and a great responsibility,” Ceferin said as soon as he was re-elected to take up the reins of UEFA, a position he has held since September 14, 2016. he enters his third term with the defense of European football, unity, solidarity and sporting merit as the banner, after a mandate defined by the pandemic, the Super League and the war in Ukraine and with changes in competitions since 2024, like the Champions League, which will increase its teams to 36, or the League of Nations, which will have another knockout round.
Ceferin, born in Grosuplje, Slovenia, on October 13, 1967, was also president of the Slovenian Football Association (NZS). He studied law at the University of Ljubljana and worked in the family law firm, where he succeeded his father as director and continued the practice of defending victims free of charge without recourse in cases of human rights violations.
For example, in 2006 he represented the Strojan gypsy family, who were expelled from their city of origin in Slovenia, a fact that led to a political scandal at the time due to the attitude of the authorities.
As a lawyer, he specialized in criminal and commercial matters, dealing with issues related to professional athletes and sports clubs.
In 2005, he became a member of the board of directors of the KMN Svea Lesna Litija, prominent futsal team in his country, and the amateur football team Lawyers of FC Ljubljana, to join the executive committee of NK Olimpija Ljubliana between 2006 and 2011, a team that rose from the Third Division to the First Division in the 2009–10 season.
In February 2011, he was elected President of the Football Association of Slovenia, where he was re-elected in February 2015 as the only candidate.
As head of his country’s federation, he succeeded in attracting more spectators to the stadiums, improving media coverage and establishing the organization in a new, modern and well-equipped headquarters in the town of Brdo pri Kranj, north of Ljubljana.
Within UEFA, he held the second vice-chairmanship of the Legal Committee and was a member of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee.
On September 14, 2016, he was chosen to succeed michel platinum to head UEFA by beating Michael van Praag, president of the Dutch Federation, by 42 votes to 13; At the UEFA Congress on 7 February 2019 in Rome, in which he was the only candidate, he was re-elected by acclamation as head of the body that regulates continental football. In addition, in October 2022, he reaffirmed his intention to run for re-election.
At this stage, UEFA approved the new Champions League from the 2024-2025 season in 2022. In addition, in February 2022, FIFA and UEFA decided to suspend all Russian national teams and clubs from participating in both competitions, resulting in the exclusion of Russia means of participation. the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Recently, regarding the “Negreira case” of possible corruption, Ceferin stated that he believes that the situation of the FCBarcelona It is “exceptionally serious”.
Since taking office following the crisis sparked by the 2015 FIFA corruption case, Ceferin has increased his authority in Europe and international football in seven years, with strong actions and messages against the “selfishness” it represents for him, the Super League. or the “strong condemnation of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine”.
Immediate decisions were added to this. Transfer of St Petersburg the last Champions League final to Paris, 24 hours after Russia entered Ukraine; three days later, he broke the contract with Gazprom, the Russian energy company with which UEFA had been affiliated since 2012, and clubs and teams from Russia and Belarus were banned from their competitions.
He showed the same determination when the Fifa one World Cup every two years which Ceferin described “as a populist project that would destroy football”, and especially with the Super League, the main workhorse since it came on the scene before UEFA opened its annual congress on April 20, 2021.
Statements such as that “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 that today they are giants is due in part to the UEFA, which has protected the ideal of competitions for 60 years, they are based on sporting merit” has been a constant.
Source: El heraldo
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
