Even if adjudicatory chamber chairman Hans-Joachim Eckert delivers a shorter ban next month, it will still be the deathknell for the two most powerful men in world football.
The recommended lifetime ban follows neither Blatter nor Platini being able to satisfactorily explain the £1.35million cheque paid to the Frenchman in 2011 for consultancy work for the FIFA president completed nine years earlier.
The pair also face charges of mismanagement, conflict of interests, false accounting and non-co-operation with or criticising the ethics committee.
Blatter insists the late payment followed an oral agreement with Platini, of which no record exists. The deposed FIFA overlord also claims that only the FIFA Congress, and not the ethics committee, can remove him.
D’Ales called the proposed disciplinary action a ‘pure scandal’ and added: ‘This ban is subject to corruption being proved but it is clearly a disproportionate punishment.
‘There is clearly a desire to harm. The electoral calendar is being manipulated and there is a strategy to eliminate Platini as a candidate.’
Platini is taking his case against his initial 90-day suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but even if he’s cleared, his FIFA presidential ambitions are dead in the water.
A ban of even one year will leave a vacancy for the UEFA presidency for which secretary-general and FIFA presidential candidate Gianni Infantino looks a good fit. That would open the door for Bahrain’s Sheik Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa to be elected head of world football next February.
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