Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini banned for 8 years from football

So long, Sepp. Au revoir, Michel.

In what could be one of the biggest announcements in modern football (if the least surprising) Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini have been duly banned from all football-related activities for eight years following an ethics investigation.

German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, the chairman of FIFA’s adjudicatory chamber, found that the bosses of FIFA and UEFA respectively were guilty of ethics code breaches surrounding a £1.3m "disloyal payment" made to the former French captain back in 2011.

Despite both men claiming the money was for work carried out between 1998 and 2002 when Platini worked as a technical adviser for Blatter (chinny reckon) it was not part of Platini's written contract, and as such deemed dishonest.

Other charges levelled at the pair from the investigators' whopping 50-page file included conflict of interest, false accounting and non-co-operation, which may be damning for Blatter, whose character has long been under scrutiny, but was an even more remarkable fall from grace for Platini; the three-time European Footballer of the Year had designs on taking over as the next FIFA boss.

Now banned for the same amount of time it has taken Manchester United to shrink from a world force into a Europa League team, it's fair to say both careers will never be salvaged. And with the FBI’s investigation into FIFA corruptions rumbling on, expect more heads to roll.

[Via: BBC]