Fifa president Sepp Blatter will appeal against his eight-year ban, his lawyer has confirmed.
Last month, Blatter and Uefa president Michel Platini were banned from football after being dound guilty the sport for conflict of interest in a two million Swiss franc (£1.35 million) payment deal that is also the subject of a criminal investigation in Switzerland.
At the weekend, it was confirmed Blatter and Platini will be able to proceed with appeals against their eight-year bans after Fifa’s ethics committee provided the pair with the full written reasons for their suspensions.
“He will appeal,” his lawyer, Richard Cullen, told dpa on Sunday.
Blatter, the world football’s governing body’s president for 17 years, vowed shortly after the announcement over his suspension that he would fight the ban, telling a news conference: “I’ll be back.”
“I will fight. I will fight for me and I will fight for FIFA. Suspended eight years for what? We go immediately once again to the appeal committee. We can go to the CAS. We go also to the Swiss [authorities]. In the Swiss law to be suspended for eight years you must have committed something very, very important.”
Blatter and Platini had to wait until receiving the document detailing the full written reasons for their suspensions before they could take their cases to FIFA’s appeals committee.
Platini’s lawyer Thibaud d’Ales confirmed on Saturday that the 60-year-old former France international will appeal against the ban.
“We can confirm that we received the grounds for the judgement in the night from Friday to Saturday,” he said. “We will read it, analyse it and on Monday appeal the case to the appeal committee.”
The Frenchman had recently confirmed that the ban had forced him to abandon his plans to stand for the Fifa presidency.
