European soccer leaders on Thursday fell squarely in line behind their powerful president, Aleksander Ceferin, by approving a change to term-limit rules that would have allowed him to retain his post through 2031, years beyond the organization’s strict 12-year term limit.
The vote, though, was quickly rendered meaningless: About an hour after winning the right to pursue a new four-year term as president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, Mr. Ceferin said that he would not seek one.
“I’ve decided I am not planning to run in 2027,” a stony-faced Mr. Ceferin said, reading from prepared notes in comments that he used to simultaneously explain his thinking and settle scores with the news media and other soccer officials.
Mr. Ceferin said that he had made the decision not to seek another term six months ago, after growing weary of issues such as leading the effort to suppress a breakaway super league and managing European soccer through the pandemic and wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
He said that he had not revealed his plans earlier because he wanted to first assess the loyalty of UEFA’s members. In recent months, several top officials in the governing body’s leadership had objected, publicly and privately, to his growing power and to any weakening of term limits.
The suggestions of a conflict first flared up at a meeting of UEFA’s executive board in December when Mr. Ceferin’s motivations for the rule change were first questioned. Even as that meeting grew feisty, though, he did not take the opportunity to make his intentions clear. Nor did he do so in January, when one of his top aides, Zvonimir Boban, a former star player from Croatia, resigned — in part, Mr. Boban said, to protest the president’s maneuvering.
That had raised the prospect that Thursday’s vote would offer a whiff of rebellion. Instead, it brought near-total capitulation: Only one of UEFA’s 55 member federations, England, voted no to the term-limits change.
Asked why he had not made his plans clear before the vote, Mr. Ceferin said that he had stayed silent for two reasons.
“First,” he said, “I wanted to see the real face of some people, and I saw it. I saw good and bad at once. And of course I did not want to influence the congress. I wanted them to decide not knowing what I’m telling you here today.”
Mr. Ceferin has served as UEFA’s president since winning election in 2016 after a corruption scandal that ousted his predecessor. Soon after taking office, he ushered in the term limits and other overhauls as part of a suite of changes meant to prevent similar scandals from happening again.
The statute change approved Thursday was a minor alteration of language but it would have had a powerful effect for Mr. Ceferin by exempting his abbreviated first term — about three years — from the term-limit calculation. That would have allowed him to run for another term in 2027, and eventually to serve as long as 15 years.
Mr. Ceferin’s efforts to change the rules had alarmed his critics, who noted that they went against his own statements, made shortly after being elected. In 2017, Mr. Ceferin had vowed to serve as an example of reform by sticking to the spirit of the new rules, even if it meant stepping aside before the 12 years allowed.
More recently, though, he had become less clear about his plans to surrender his position — and his control over UEFA, a billion-dollar organization that runs events, like the Champions League, that are some of the richest and most popular sporting events on the planet.
The job is undeniably an attractive one: It comes with a $3 million annual salary, luxury travel and the opportunity to rub shoulders with celebrities, political leaders and sports stars — all while Mr. Ceferin commutes from his home in Slovenia to UEFA’s headquarters in Switzerland on a weekly basis, per his longstanding arrangement with the governing body. At the same time, Mr. Ceferin has used staff appointments,…
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