Suspended Uefa president Michel Platini says he will not stand in the Fifa presidential election next month.<\/p>\n
Platini, along with Fifa president Sepp Blatter, has been banned from football-related activities for eight years by world football’s governing body.<\/p>\n
Both men were found guilty of breaches surrounding a \u00a31.3m ($2m) “disloyal payment” made to Platini in 2011.<\/p>\n
They are appealing against their bans, but Platini says the timing of the 26 February election means he cannot run.<\/p>\n
“I’m withdrawing from the race for the Fifa presidency,” the 60-year-old Frenchman told the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
“The timing is not good for me. I don’t have the means to fight on equal terms with the other candidates.<\/p>\n
“I have not been given the chance to play the game. Bye bye Fifa, bye bye Fifa presidency.”<\/p>\n
‘Injustice is revolting me’<\/strong><\/p>\n Platini, president of European football’s governing body since 2007, had submitted his candidacy for the Fifa presidential election but could not stand while suspended.<\/p>\n He and Blatter, 79, plan to take their cases to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.<\/p>\n “I’ve spent more time in hearing rooms than on football pitches speaking about 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 or football news,” added Platini.<\/p>\n “I’m taking this philosophically. Let’s wait and see what happens. But injustice is revolting me and I’m trying to fight it.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC Sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Suspended Uefa president Michel Platini says he will not stand in the Fifa presidential election next month. Platini, along with Fifa president Sepp Blatter, has been banned from football-related activities for eight years by world football’s governing body. Both men were found guilty of breaches surrounding a \u00a31.3m ($2m) “disloyal payment” made to Platini in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}