Fallen FIFA chief Sepp Blatter will appeal against his eight-year ban, his lawyer said, joining fellow suspended official Michel Platini in a fight to clear his name. “We will appeal it, of course,” Blatter’s US-based attorney Richard Cullen confirmed to AFP in an e-mail.
The confirmation came after FIFA’s ethics tribunal on Saturday revealed it had provided Blatter and UEFA president Platini with the reasons for imposing the ban, clearing the way for both men to appeal. A lawyer for Platini, who has also been banned for eight years, had earlier confirmed an appeal would be launched.
In December, FIFA’s ethics tribunal ruled both men had abused their positions over a 2 million Swiss francs ($2 million, 1.8 million euros) payment made to Platini in 2011 for work carried out between 1999 and 2002. Blatter, who has headed FIFA since 1998, was also fined 50,000 Swiss francs while Platini, a FIFA vice-president, was fined 80,000 Swiss francs.
The court insisted there was “no legal basis” for the payment that Blatter authorised for Platini in 2011. Platini’s lawyer Thibaud d’Ales said Saturday that his 60-year-old client had indeed received the reasons behind the ban. “We’ll read them, analyse them and launch an appeal on Monday,” D’Ales said.
The tribunal did not provide further details of the reasoning behind its decision. Instead it stressed it had now “fulfilled its commitment to provide the grounds for the respective decisions to Mr Blatter and Mr Platini within the first half of January 2016.” “After receiving the grounds for the decisions, both officials may lodge an appeal with the FIFA Appeal Committee,” the statement said.
If that appeal is rejected, the two men can appeal further to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the highest tribunal in sports. At the time of the verdict, both men angrily vowed to fight the bans, which started immediately.
The tribunal decision promises to end 79-year-old Blatter’s four decades with FIFA in disgrace.  
It also dealt a devastating blow to Platini’s hopes of taking over as head of FIFA in an election on February 26.  
The UEFA president pulled out of the race earlier this week, saying the ban has made it impossible for him to put together a campaign to take on the sport’s most powerful job.
He told French sports newspaper L’Equipe that he no longer had “the time nor the means to go to the voters, to meet people, to fight against the other candidates. “In withdrawing, I am dedicating myself to my defence.”
FIFA has since last May be rocked to its core by a cascade of corruption charges and arrests that culminated with the implication of the two long considered world football’s most powerful men.
The US justice department has charged 39 individuals and two companies over graft within world football going back decades, in a sweeping prosecution that has sparked an unprecedented crisis at FIFA. A total of nine FIFA officials were arrested during two raids at the five-star Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, on May 27 and December 3, by Swiss police acting on US warrants.
PSG threaten British singer M.I.A. over using jersey
Paris Saint Germain football club has demanded that British singer M.I.A. remove images of its PSG jersey from her “Borders” music video which features refugees trying to get to Europe. The singer yesterday published a copy of a legal letter she received from PSG’s deputy chief executive Jean-Claude Blanc demanding she remove the images and compensate the Qatar-owned French league leaders for “harm suffered.”
“So there’s the case MIA vs PSG - discuss...”, M.I.A. wrote on her Twitter account. The letter says PSG had an “unpleasant surprise” when M.I.A. twice appeared in her latest music video wearing a jersey in which the PSG logo is clearly visible, as well as those of sponsors Nike and the Qatari National Bank. The slogan “Fly Emirates” has been changed to “Fly Pirates”.
The video of “Borders” shows images of migrants climbing fences and packed into boats in a commentary on the recent influx of people into Europe fleeing war and poverty.
“Borders, what’s up with that? Politics, what’s up with that? Police shots, what’s up with that?” sings the British-Sri Lankan rapper, whose real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam.
“More than being surprised, we simply do not understand why we are associated, through our logo and the official jersey of our team’s players, to such denunciation,” reads the legal letter.
The letter lists social actions taken by the PSG Foundation such as helping poor and sick children and the donation of one million euros ($1.1 million) to French charities “in the context of the refugee crisis.”