Thursday 25 August 2016 09:31, UK
Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter's fate hangs in the balance as the Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing into his six-year ban gets under way.
Speaking in Lausanne on Thursday morning, Blatter said: "I feel good and I am very confident we can go forward. We were in favour of this tribunal and I'm going to defend the situation.
"I'm sure at the end, or perhaps they will, the panel will understand the payment made to Michel Platini was really a debt we had against him and with the principle of having a debt, you pay them."
Blatter's 18-year run at the head of world football's governing body ended acrimoniously last December when he was banned from the sport for eight years, later reduced to six, by the FIFA Ethics Committee.
The 80-year-old Swiss and the then-UEFA president Platini were originally handed eight-year bans for a £1.35m payment that Blatter made to his close ally in 2011.
Those bans were reduced to six years by a FIFA appeal panel in February, and Platini saw a further two years knocked off his ban when he went to CAS in May.
But the CAS panel that heard Platini's appeal backed the original FIFA decision that the payment, supposedly the balance Platini was owed for consultancy work he did between 1999-2002, was not legitimate.
Both men have strongly denied any wrongdoing, with Blatter keeping a low-profile since leaving office.
Blatter added: "Like In a football game, you have a situation where the referee is whistling, one player says 'I have done nothing and the other is the same and the referee has to decide and it's the same for today.
"I will accept the verdict and I do hope it will be positive for me. We are footballers and we learn to lose and win and whatever the outcome it won't be the end of the world."
