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FOOTBALL

Platini loses final appeal against football suspension

Switzerland's highest court has rejected former Uefa chief Michel Platini's appeal against a four-year suspension from football, ending his efforts to overturn the penalty, his lawyer said on Thursday.

Platini loses final appeal against football suspension
Michel Platini. Photo: Jean-Christophe Verhaegen
Platini, 61, “is obviously very disappointed”, his lawyer Vincent Solari told AFP in an email.
   
Platini was hit with the penalty over a $2 million payment he received in 2011, authorised by then Fifa chief Sepp Blatter for work he did a decade earlier, with no contract to show for the deal.
   
He was initially hit with an eight-year ban by the Fifa ethics committee in late 2015, at the height of an unprecedented scandal that upended world football, but his suspension was later cut to six years upon appeal.
   
Platini appealed his suspension to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which in May 2016 chopped another two years off the suspension, and he took the case further to the Federal Court in Lausanne.
   
Switzerland's highest court ruled that the ban is justified and that four years was not an unreasonable length of time, ATS reported.
   
In theory, Platini can therefore resume football-linked activities in 2019.
   
His lawyer complained that the federal court had examined the case from “too narrow an angle”, and that Platini was “very disappointed that (the court therefore) failed to recognise that he acted in good faith”.
   
Blatter, who was also slapped with a six-year ban, and Platini were the most prominent casualties of the massive scandal that rocked the world of football, and which ended Platini's aspirations to take over the helm of Fifa.

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RACISM

VIDEO: Spain’s La Liga reviews video of boy racially abusing Vinicius

Spain's La Liga on Monday said it was reviewing a video of a child making racist insults towards Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior during the 2-2 draw with Valencia at the weekend.

VIDEO: Spain's La Liga reviews video of boy racially abusing Vinicius

“We’re in the process of studying and analysing the facts from a legal standpoint to see what we can and should do,” La Liga sources said.

In a video published by a journalist for ESPN Brasil, and picked up by Spanish media, a boy sitting in a woman’s lap can be heard calling Vinicius a “monkey”.

The Brazilian scored twice for Madrid as his team recovered from two goals down at Mestalla on Saturday.

Vinicius raised his fist in a “Black Power” salute after the first of his two goals at a ground where he was racially abused last season. Valencia subsequently banned three people from the stadium for life.

The 23-year-old has become a symbol of the fight against discrimination in Spanish football after suffering racist abuse on many occasions, and he was jeered repeatedly by home supporters on Saturday.

Jude Bellingham was sent off after the final whistle against Valencia for protesting after the referee blew the final whistle right before the England midfielder headed home what he thought was the winning goal.

READ ALSO: Football star Vinicius highlights racist behaviour from Spanish fans

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