There is little doubt that the biggest sporting tournament of the year is the UEFA Euro 2016. And the heat has been raised as the official song of the championship has been released. The song will be performed at the opening and closing ceremony by French producer and DJ David Guetta. Accompanying him will be 18-year-old Swedish singer Zara Larsson.
Earlier, UEFA was in news for all the wrong reasons only a few days ago. Michel Platini quit as the head of European football after a sports tribunal rejected his final appeal against his ban from football over a suspect USD 2.0 million payment he received from FIFA.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where Platini filed an appeal against his ban in February, reduced his suspension from six years to four, saying the penalty initially imposed by FIFA’s ethics committee was “too severe.”
But the court said it was “not convinced” that the USD 2.0 million (1.8 million euros) payment Platini received from FIFA in 2011 was legitimate.
The payment was ordered by FIFA’s disgraced ex-president Sepp Blatter, who was also brought down over the infamous transaction. The pair are the highest-profile casualties in an unprecedented set of corruption scandals within world football, which has seen dozens of long-serving FIFA executives arrested and charged with corruption.
Platini, once the front-runner to succeed Blatter at FIFA and become the most powerful man in the sport, said in a statement that following the ruling he had no choice but to resign from UEFA. (With PTI inputs)
