Aleksander Ceferin is new president of UEFA read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/841-aleksander-ceferin-is-new-president-of-uefa

The 48-year old Ceferin won UEFA presidential election taking 42 of the 55 votes.

Aleksander Ceferin of Slovenia has been elected as the new president of UEFA, European football's governing body. Ceferin is to complete the term of banned former President Michel Platini.

Shortly after the result of the vote was announced, Ceferin told the delegates at the extraordinary UEFA Congress in Athens that he was proud to be the new UEFA president.

Van Praag stressed that the national associations to throw their support behind Ceferin, who will complete Michel Platini's third four-year term, which expires in March 2019.

The 61-year-old Platini stepped down as UEFA president in May after the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected his appeal against his six-year ban from all football-related activities, handed down by FIFA last December. However, the CAS did reduce his ban to four years.

FIFA banned Platini over a payment of some 2 million Swiss francs 1.8 million euros, $2 million which he received from then FIFA President Joseph Blatter in 2011 for work done a decade earlier. Blatter was handed a similar ban.

European football's governing body, as delegates from the 55 nations that make up UEFA vote in Athens to elect a new president.

The winner will succeed Michel Platini, who stepped down back in May after failing in a legal bid to get his FIFA ban over corruption allegations lifted.

The delegates will have to choose between just two candidates, Michael van Praag, the president of the Royal Dutch Football Association, and Aleksander Ceferin, president of the Football Association of Slovenia.

The salaries of the Executive Committee members and the UEFA president are still secret and these are precisely the 16 people who still decide which countries are awarded the right to host European championships - by secret ballot.

Van Praag says if elected president, he will change all of this. He recently told German public broadcasters ARD and WDR that he wants to place the decision as to which country should be awarded the right to host a European championship in the hands of the UEFA Congress instead of just the Executive Committee. FIFA made a similar change years ago.