KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: World football federation FIFA is expected to sue former president Sepp Blatter and former vice-president Michel Platini for the ‘disloyal payment’ of $2m which led to both men’s expulsion from the game.

A recommendation to that effect has been made by the FIFA governance committee in the knowledge that the legal deadline for recovering sums in such situations is only a month away. FIFA has also been advised to sue for costs and accrued interest.

Blatter authorised the payment to make up for what both men claimed was an overdue delay in authorising monies due to the then UEFA president for work he had undertaken on behalf of FIFA between 1998 and 2002.

Platini only claimed the money in 2010 and no evidence of a written contract could be produced by either man. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

The Frenchman, who has just completed a four-year suspension, has also always denied that the coincidental payment was related to his decision not to run against Blatter for the FIFA presidency in 2011.

In his recently-published memoir Entre Nous Platini indicates that he was piqued into asking for the cash after learning the terms under which FIFA had paid off a senior employee – understood to have been deputy secretary general Jerome Champagne – in January 2010.

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