Sepp Blatter corruption scandal: Disgraced Fifa boss insists he will accept verdict in appeal against six-year ban

SEPP BLATTER insists he will accept the verdict in his appeal against his six-year ban from football.

The disgraced former Fifa president has taken the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in a last-ditch attempt to clear his name.

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Blatter, 80, and former Uefa president Michel Platini were banned from all football-related activity last December over ethics violations.

And the shamed Swiss – who led the game’s governing body for 17 years before resigning in June – told reporters outside the closed-door hearing: “I will accept the verdict.

“I do hope it will be positive for me, but we are footballers. We learn to win but also we learn to lose.

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“My name wouldn’t be Sepp Blatter if I didn’t have faith, if I wasn’t optimistic.”

The pair were banned after it emerged last year that Blatter authorised a suspect payment of £1.5million to Platini in 2011 for work done a decade earlier.

Both men, who have denied wrongdoing, were initially banned for eight years which was later reduced to six by Fifa’s appeals committee.

They claim Platini was being paid for consultancy work carried out between 1999 and 2002.

Blatter added: “I’m sure at the end… that the panel will understand that the payment made to Platini was really a debt that we [owed] him.

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“This is a principle, if you have debts, you pay them.”

Platini – who is also appearing at the trial – claimed: “I come, for the umpteenth time, to tell the truth.”

The former France internation, 61, lost his CAS appeal in May in a verdict that weakens Blatter’s prospects of an acquittal.

However his ban was again cut to just four years.

A verdict in Blatter’s one-day trial may not be reached for several weeks.