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New UEFA president will look at changes to Champions League

UEFA has elected Aleksander Ceferin as its new president. The 55 UEFA member federations overwhelmingly chose the 48-year-old Slovenian who obtained a 29-vote majority over Dutch rival, Michael van Praag, at a congress meeting in Athens on Wednesday.

New UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin in Athens
New UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin in Athens Reuters
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Cerefin said his first big challenge would be to look at changes to the Champions League that would give four guaranteed places to England, Germany, Italy and Spain from 2018.

"About the Champions League, we were not informed properly, I still think so," Cerefin said shortly after his election victory.

"I will have to sit down with all 55 national associations to see what is the agreement and what we can do in the future about it.

"Either I want it or not, I will have to deal with it and that will be the first thing to deal with."

The Slovenian lawyer will replace the French football leader Michel Platini, who told the UEFA congress that he felt no guilt over an almost two million euro payment from FIFA that has seen him suspended for four years. In his farewell speech, the 62-year-old French football legend said his “conscience was clear”.

Platini and former FIFA leader Sepp Blatter, are both under criminal investigation by Swiss prosecutors over the payment that Blatter authorised in 2011 for work carried out a decade earlier without a contract.

Ceferin will take on the remainder of Platini's term of office, until 2019.

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