by The new president of European soccer’s governing body sat in a chair in his glass-walled office in Switzerland, taking in the sweeping views of Lake Geneva and insisting he wouldn’t be there long enough to feel comfortable.
It was 2017, football was still emerging from its biggest scandal and Aleksander Ceferin, just months into his presidency, was unequivocal that he was already on the clock. The sport, he said, could no longer accept leaders who were so comfortable with the trappings of power and luxury that they worked the system to stay in their jobs. He wouldn’t be like them, he promised.
The three-year term for which he had been elected, completing the one vacated by his disgraced predecessor, “is already a term for me,” he said. If he was lucky enough to win the two full terms plus four years allowed by the rules, that’s fine. But that would be all. Ceferin had no interest in being president for life.
“They said, ‘Why are there term limits? You can be here 20 or 30 years,’” he said at the time. “I don’t want to stay 20 years.”
Less than a decade later, Ceferin may have changed his mind. At his urging, the football body he heads, UEFA, will vote next week on a set of rule changes that include a measure that would allow Ceferin to remain president of one of the world’s richest sports organizations for years to come. beyond the completion date it once promised.
He is not the only leader who emerged from a foreign scandal who now seeks to strengthen his position in a powerful position. A similar extension of term limits has already been quietly approved by football’s world governing body FIFA, ensuring that its president, Gianni Infantino, is eligible for an additional four-year term in a job that paid him around $4.5 million in cash and bonuses in 2022. .
At the International Olympic Committee, supporters of the term-limited president Thomas Bach recently proposed that the organization’s statutes be modified so that it can remain for another four years. Bach, who did not rule out the idea, knows those rules better than anyone: like Infantino, he is a lawyer who helped draft his organization’s post-scandal reforms (including the introduction of term limits) before being elevated to office. . to the highest position.
Sports governance experts, however, are concerned about this trend, as current leaders were tasked with leading their organizations out of a scandal-plagued past. They say reforms like term limits, born of those scandals, are worth protecting to prevent a concentration of power in the hands of a small circle of executives who run popular and lucrative sports enjoyed by millions of people around the world.
Weakening or eliminating them, experts warned, is a measure straight out of the playbook of world leaders and autocrats so powerful that they can choose to maintain control for as long as they want. “It just says that once people are in power, they don’t want to leave,” said Alex Phillips, UEFA’s former head of governance and compliance.
When asked about Ceferin’s intentions to run again, UEFA did not offer a direct answer from the president and instead suggested a review of his recent public comments. In subsequent interviews with two British Departureswhich he used to settle scores with members of his administration and other rivals, Ceferin was noncommittal about whether he would seek to remain in office, despite his previous definitive promises.
But he said that unless UEFA’s current rules were revised, “there would be no limit and could run forever.”
Opposition to that possibility is growing. Interviews with UEFA executives, board members and employees over the past few months revealed that some of the most powerful figures within the organization have strongly objected, arguing that even a perceived weakening of term limits is reckless. A senior official has already resigned in protest. Another recently warned his colleagues, and Ceferin, that creating an all-powerful president went against the spirit of the reforms enacted to prevent a repeat of past scandals.
However, as UEFA’s 55 national associations vote on the change to term limits at their annual meeting in Paris on Thursday – tucked away within a broader package of more anodyne changes – even Ceferin’s harshest critics expect let him get what he wants.
That’s how things work, they said, in a world where even influential critics rarely put points of principle above tens of millions of dollars in funding, prime committee assignments and valuable hosting rights.
As a result, they say, it is becoming harder to remove chief executives than their corrupt predecessors. There have been no contested presidential elections at FIFA, UEFA or any of football’s other regional governing bodies – or at the IOC – since their current leaders took office almost a decade ago.
“The longer they stay, the more powerful they become,” Phillips said, “so the more likely they are to be able to change the rules without opposition.”
Many of them, he added, now “genuinely believe that they are irreplaceable.”
Ceferin, 56, was in many ways an accidental president of UEFA. His rise only came after a corruption scandal that revealed years of bribery, vote buying and secret deals in football. The case led to the ouster of some of the sport’s oldest leaders, toppling empires and creating space for new faces. As the little-known leader of Slovenia’s football federation, Ceferin seemed a clear break from a troubled past.
Ceferin, a black belt in karate who speaks five languages, led the organization during the coronavirus pandemic and rejected a proposal for a European super league that posed an existential threat to UEFA’s biggest source of income, the Champions League, the competition. club annual that makes money. in billions of dollars from sponsorships and broadcast deals. Throughout that time, thanks to his tenure, he has rubbed shoulders with world leaders and some of the sport’s best-known athletes.
No wonder then, his critics say, that he welcomes the option to stay in his $3 million-a-year job as long as the rules allow it.
Ceferin has insisted that the proposed change is little more than a tweak to the legal language, one that preserves the 12-year maximum for the organization’s leaders, but will now declare that terms “begun or completed before July 1, 2017” will not be taken into account.” “Ceferin was elected in September 2016, so the review effectively erases the three years he once called his first term and opens the door for him to remain until at least 2031.
“The proposed change was not intended to extend the term limit, but rather to rectify an invalid provision,” UEFA said in a statement about the amendment.
That narrow clarification was questioned by one of UEFA’s top officials, England’s David Gill, during a board meeting in December in Germany. According to several people present, Gill asked to speak after the head of UEFA’s legal committee, a former ally of Ceferin, omitted the term limit proposal in a presentation on the most important changes to the rules.
As the longest-serving official on the board, Mr. Gill pointedly told the board that he was the only one present with experience from the old days at both FIFA and UEFA. Amending the term limits statute was not a minor change, as had been suggested, but rather “a major change” worthy of discussion. Ceferin responded that the current rules were “not clear” and accused Gill that he had never discussed term limits in board meetings until after Ceferin became president.
“It’s about the spirit of the rules,” Mr Gill responded. “You were elected before the statutes changed. You were president before the statutes changed. And the statutes were very clear at the time: a partial mandate is a full mandate.”
Tensions erupted into public view in January, when one of Ceferin’s closest collaborators, former Croatia star Zvonimir Boban, resigned as UEFA’s director of football. Boban regretted that it had been Ceferin himself who had led the reforms that he was now destined to weaken. He walked into his boss’s office and resigned, he said, when it became clear that Ceferin “intends to move forward regardless of his personal aspirations.”
Like Ceferin, Infantino and Bach also enjoy a degree of control over their organizations that insulates them from challenges, according to Stephen Weatherill, a sports governance expert and former professor of European law at Oxford University.
National federations, Professor Weatherill noted, rely on relationships with international governing bodies (and their leaders) for annual budget assistance, development aid and access to hosting rights for lucrative events. A strong leader who cultivates those relationships and that sense of dependence can use the power of the position to his advantage.
“Term limits ensure that sports leaders do not stay in their positions too long,” Phillips said. “History has shown time and time again that the longer they stay, the more they focus on staying in power or pursuing personal interests, rather than developing their sport.”
