Slovenia’s Aleksander Ceferin elected new Uefa president

Slovenia's Aleksander Ceferin has been elected as Uefa's seventh president at an extraordinary congress in Athens.

The 48-year-old lawyer, almost unheard of outside his own country at the start of the campaign, beat his Dutch rival Michael van Praag by 42 votes to 13, with no abstentions.

Ceferin will now complete the remaining two-and-a-half years of former president Michel Platini’s term, after the Frenchman was banned from all football activities in December.

Among the first to congratulate Ceferin was FAI chief executive John Delaney.

After the result was announced, Ceferin said: “Dear friends, thank you for your fantastic support.

“It’s a great honour, but also a great responsibility. It means a lot to me and my family is very proud, and my small and beautiful Slovenia is very proud about it. I hope one day you will also be proud of me.”

Van Praag also addressed the congress after the result was announced, and pledged to support Ceferin.

“Losing is not nice, but I have to thank everyone for the open and clear campaign,” he said.

“The way I was received was very nice and I really cherish the nice talks, the intensive talks I had with various colleagues.

“It was in Italy that Aleksander took the floor and said, ‘We are not enemies’, and that is exactly how it is. We have the same goals, look at our programmes.

"We want a different Uefa, a better Uefa, he wants to do it his way and I wanted to do it my way.

“But today democracy has spoken and I respect that. I would like to thank the countries that supported me from the beginning to the end and I call on them to stand behind Aleksander. I will do the same. It is up to him, but if he wishes my assistance I am always there.”

Prior to the vote, Ceferin used his 15-minute pitch to delegates at the Grand Resort Lagonissi hotel to address the concerns about his age and experience, while boosting his credentials as a “team player” who will be “the most accessible and approachable Uefa president ever”.

Van Praag, 68, likened himself to the “still rocking” Rolling Stones and said his age was his “USP” and his experience his greatest asset. He also provided a lot more policy detail than Ceferin, who spoke more to the room’s heart than head.

The session was somewhat controversially opened by Platini, who remains banned for four years but had been granted special permission by Fifa’s ethics committee to bid farewell to the organisation he has run since 2007 as a “gesture of humanity”.

Clearly moved by the occasion, Platini used most of his allotted 10 minutes to praise the organisation, but he started by repeating that he is innocent of any wrongdoing.

“I am certain that I haven’t made any mistakes and I will continue to fight this in the courts,” said Platini.

There had been fears he launch an extensive defence of his record, but instead the vast majority of his speech was a florid eulogy of football’s “beauty” and “universality”, and praise for Uefa’s work under his leadership.

“You are going to continue this wonderful mission without me, for reasons that I won’t go into,” said Platini.

“I hold no grievance against anybody who didn’t support me — everybody is entitled to their own belief. But that is not important, what is important is football.”

The sense that this really is the end of an era was immediately reinforced when new Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who had been Platini's right-hand man at Uefa, made the next speech.

“This is emotional for me, too. A page is turning and this is a new chapter for Uefa,” he said.