Harsh accusations at the top of world football

Former UEFA president Michel Platini has launched an extremely harsh attack on current FIFA president Gianni Infantino, whom he accuses of concentrating power and diminishing the internal democracy of the world football forum. The statements were made in an interview published by The Guardian. According to Platini, Infantino has radically transformed after the Covid-19 pandemic, a period he considers a turning point in FIFA's leadership. "He was a good number two, but not a good number one. He did a very good job at UEFA, but he has a problem: he likes the rich and the powerful, those who have money. It's in his nature," Platini said of Infantino, who was his secretary general between 2009 and 2015, when the Frenchman led UEFA. The former great footballer claims that, once he reached the helm of FIFA, Infantino abandoned democratic practices: "That was how he was as number two, but at that time he was not the boss. Unfortunately, Infantino has become an autocrat since the pandemic,” Platini said.

• Surprising comparison with Sepp Blatter

Paradoxically, Platini presents Sepp Blatter, FIFA president from 1998 to 2015, later removed following a corruption scandal, in a more favorable light. "There is less democracy than in Blatter's time. You can say what you want about him, but his main problem was that he wanted to stay at FIFA for life. He was a good man for football,” said the former three-time Ballon d'Or winner. The relationship between Platini and Infantino is marked by an open conflict that has lasted for almost a decade. Platini suspects the current FIFA president and his close associates of having contributed to his elimination from the race for the world forum presidency in 2015. The context is a controversial payment of 2 million Swiss francs (approximately 1.8 million euros), made by FIFA in 2011, on the orders of Sepp Blatter, to Platini, without a written contractual justification. The case led to criminal investigations and the suspension of both officials. Although Blatter and Platini were definitively acquitted in 2025 by the Swiss courts, the consequences for the former UEFA president were major. He was initially suspended for eight years by the FIFA Ethics Committee, a sanction later reduced to six years and then to four years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Platini claims that he was the victim of a deliberate maneuver to block his access to the FIFA leadership. "I was destined to become FIFA president. All this happened because they didn't want it. This suspension was a grave injustice and, in the end, it was political. A group of people decided to kill me,” the former official said. In late November, Platini filed a defamation lawsuit against three former FIFA officials, seeking to repair his image damaged by the scandals of the past decade.