UEFA chief Platini hopes ‘new leadership’ will solve FIFA’s woes

FIFA is set to elect a new president at its Extraordinary Committee meeting on February 26 next year. Incumbent Sepp Blatter announced on Monday that he will not stand in the FIFA presidential election.

He earlier stepped down from his post despite getting re-elected to the chair for a fifth four-year term after getting embroiled in a global corruption scandal.  “We need to reform FIFA and we need to do it now,” Platini said in a statement on Monday.

“Regarding the election, we now have a concrete date which means we can look forward to new leadership which will surely bring with it new ideas and new solutions.” Platini went to call it an “exciting time for FIFA” and a time when meaningful work can be done to improve and restructure the international organisation in the interest of the game. “Along with the rest of FIFA’s Executive Committee, I feel that the creation of a task force with internal and external members to deal specifically with reforms is an important step towards improving overall processes and transparency within the organization,” the UEFA head added.