Re-elected Michel Platini pledges to tackle violence
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Your support makes all the difference.Michel Platini highlighted sectarianism at Old Firm derbies as he pledged to tackle violence and illegal betting in his next four years as UEFA president.
Platini, who has been re-elected unopposed as UEFA chief until 2015, said there had been "incidents in far too many grounds around Europe" and praised the Scottish Football Association's stand against sectarianism.
He told the UEFA Congress in Paris: "As George Peat and Stewart Regan (president and chief executive of the SFA) so rightly put it in a recent statement on behalf of the Scottish association: there is no place in football for those who transform passion into violence and pride into sectarianism.
"Every country should establish a whole battery of legal measures enabling them to ban hooligans from stadiums.
"Every country should appoint a prosecutor in charge of illegal betting and corruption in sport.
"I have started meeting the heads of state and government of countries particularly affected by this problem.
"It is important that their countries realise the seriousness of the situation and that they find a way to help us, you and their national associations."
Platini also reiterated his belief in UEFA's financial fair play rules protecting club football.
The rules mean clubs in European competition will only be able to spend on transfers and wages what they earn in revenues.
He added: "This project should enable us to prevent some of our most time-honoured clubs from going under because of risky management by an irresponsible few.
"In 1984 Jacques Georges (ex-UEFA president) used a phrase that I have been drumming home constantly for months and thought I had coined myself: 'We all know what it means if we spend more than we earn, and in football it would mean the end of the game.'
"So... perhaps history does sort of repeat itself after all.
"On the topic of club finances, allow me to remind you of just one figure: together, Europe's professional clubs accumulated net losses of 1.2 billion euros in 2009 alone.
"So yes, there is a huge amount of money in football, but more importantly there is a moral problem in the way this money is sometimes generated and used.
"Financial fair play is a crucial project that will enable us to clean up certain practices within our game.
"It will be implemented in full in the course of my next term and we will apply the rules with the courage and resolution for which UEFA should be known."
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