A "pressing question" within the soccer community is what effect the Swiss investigation into outgoing FIFA President Sepp Blatter will have on UEFA President Michel Platini, according to Sam Borden of the N.Y. TIMES. Platini, seen by most as Blatter’s "most likely successor," has "not been implicated by the investigators." However, he was interviewed along with Blatter, "as part of an investigation" into an '11 payment of about $2M from Blatter to Platini. Not long after Platini's interviews, FIFA’s independent ethics committee "began its own investigation into the payment," a development that indicates that Platini, as well as Blatter, "could be provisionally suspended." Platini in a statement said that the money he received was "owed to him as part of a contract he had with FIFA." But he did not address "why it was paid nearly a decade after one might normally expect." A source said that the revelations about Platini would "send the coming presidential election 'into a tailspin.'" He had been "seen as a suitable bridge candidate for president, an executive who has an interest in reform." While Platini was "largely seen as the most palatable option," the tinge of corruption "may mar him" (N.Y. TIMES, 9/28). SI.com's Grant Wahl wrote Platini's role in the payment "certainly makes you wonder if he’s the right guy to replace Blatter and lead FIFA into a supposedly cleaner, more progressive new era." It also "makes you wonder if there’s any way for FIFA to really change if it’s just the same old leaders who are going to be sticking around" (SI.com, 9/25).
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? USA TODAY's Martin Rogers wrote the Swiss investigation, "even with a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise, seems to be a hole" from which Blatter "cannot climb." This "comes from Blatter's own turf, the place where he felt safe, the country where FIFA has been able to merrily go about its business for decades" (USATODAY.com, 9/25). In N.Y., Juliet Macur wrote FIFA's ethics committee "should suspend" Blatter, just as it "suspended his top deputy, Jérôme Valcke, when he was accused this month of involvement in a black-market ticketing scheme, and just as it suspended 11 other people after their arrests kicked off the latest scandal in May." Platini "cannot plug the ship’s holes now, not after he was implicated in the latest accusations against Blatter." Macur: "But if not Mr. Platini, then who? Few people on FIFA’s executive committee seem fit to take over" (N.Y. TIMES, 9/27).
