Aleksander Ceferin Re-Elected Unopposed As Uefa President

Soccer doesn’t do democracy. On Wednesday, Slovenian official Aleksander Ceferin was re-elected for a four-year term as president of Uefa, the European soccer governing body. It was the third time in 2022 that a figurehead in the sport was elected unopposed and by acclamation after FIFA’s Gianni Infantino and Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).

A lawyer and soccer administrator in his native Slovenia, Ceferin rose to power in 2016 defeating the Netherlands’ Michel van Praag. He succeeded France’s Michel Platini. In his second term, Ceferin steered the confederation through the coronavirus pandemic, consolidating Uefa’s robust financial position. However, his term was dominated by the breakaway European Super League as well as the fallout of the chaos around two major finals, the Euro 2020 final and the 2022 Champions League final.

In a head-spinning 72 hours in April, a cabal of European elite clubs went nuclear with their plans to launch a breakaway, closed competition – a vehicle for a short-term cash injection and a long-term stranglehold of the club game. The plan became a PR disaster and then simply a smoldering wreck, defeated by a storm of protest from every corner of the industry and beyond. Fans, ruling bodies, and even governments united in a vehement rebuke of the rogue clubs.

A shrewd operator, Ceferin had purportedly not seen the breakaway movement coming, but his organisation presented itself as the saviour of the game, protecting the European sports model. That model is now being examined in European courts. “Our model is based on sporting merit,” said Ceferin at the Uefa Congress. “Where we come from, merit doesn’t have a price. Merit can’t be claimed. It can’t be acquired. It can only be earned. Season by season. On and off the pitch. There’s no room for cartels on this continent.”

He called the Super League ‘a wolf distinguished as a grandmother’ and hit all the right notes in a speech with populistic undertones. ‘We must never forget that football is a public commodity,” said Ceferin. “It is one of the last public assets.’ It was a peculiar way of portraying an industry that has been completely privatised and defending the actions of mercantile confederation. He thanked Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al Khelaifi for his pivotal role in protecting the European model. Uefa however will water down its rules on multi-club ownership because of investor appetite.

He also addressed the inequality in the European game and there was a brief moment of vague introspection when he said that “no leader has an unblemished record”, referring to the dramatic scenes at both the Euro 2020 final in London and last season’s Champions League final in Paris where Liverpool supporters suffered crushing and violent policing but were then blamed by Uefa for the chaos.

Ceferin spoke of the need for inclusion, arguing that “unfortunately some people have not grasped this concept”. But it turned out that his own members didn’t quite grasp it. Norwegian FA president Lise Klaveness campaigned to become the first female member of the executive committee standing against men, but she fell well short getting the vote. Uefa’s executive committee remains a male bastion.