Athens: Disgraced former Uefa president Michel Platini insisted he had done nothing wrong and said his conscience was clear as he gave a farewell speech to European soccer’s governing body at their extraordinary Congress on Wednesday.

The Frenchman, who resigned in May after being banned from the sport for four years for ethics violations, was given a round of applause by the delegates but did not get a standing ovation.

“Thank you. Thank you for these nine years. I think we did a great job... Friends of football, farewell,” said Platini, who was first elected in 2007, at the end of his seven-minute speech.

Despite Platini’s ban, Fifa’s ethics committee said an exception had been made for the event as a “gesture of humanity.”

“It’s very emotional for me to be here but I’m also delighted to be here because this will be my last speech to a Uefa Congress,” Platini began. “You are going to continue this wonderful mission without me for reasons I don’t want to go into today.

“I have a clear conscience, I am certain not to have made any mistake and will continue to fight this in the courts.”

One of the finest players of his generation who went on to become a powerful sporting official, Platini was suspended over his dealings with fallen world soccer chief Sepp Blatter during the scandal which shook the sport’s global governing body last year.

Platini was banished along with Blatter over a payment of 2 million Swiss francs ($2.08m) made to the Frenchman by Fifa with Blatter’s approval in 2011 for work done a decade earlier.

Platini said that football was “a game rather than a product, a sport rather than a market, a show not a business.”

“There isn’t one football for large nations and one for small nations, there is a single football, a single sport, it doesn't belong to Fifa or Uefa, it belongs to the whole world,” he said.

“That is why I wanted to come today to say thank you and, friends of football, farewell.”

Meanwhile, Aleksander Ceferin, a little-known Slovenian soccer official, was elected as the head of Uefa on Wednesday and promised to stand up to the big clubs.

The 48-year-old will replace disgraced Frenchman Michel Platini after comfortably beating experienced Dutch football administrator Michael van Praag by 42 votes to 13. “I am not a showman, I have no ego issues and I am not a man of unrealistic promises,” said Ceferin after the poll amongst Europe’s 55 national football associations. “My small and beautiful Slovenia is very proud about it and I hope that one day you will also be very proud about it.”

Ceferin said his first task would be tackling widespread dissatisfaction at controversial changes to the Champions League agreed between Uefa and the European Club Association, which has 220 members from 53 FAs, in favour of the big clubs.

 Uefa increased the number of places allocated to clubs from Spain, England, Germany and Italy in the lucrative group stage and cut the slots for the smaller countries. The move came amid threats that the big clubs could form a breakaway Super League.

“Whether I want it or not, I will have to deal with that and that will be the first thing to deal with,” Ceferin said.

“Uefa is a very good and very strong organisation, it was without leadership for some time and I think that in a way was a problem in dealing with those things.

“We should show we are the ones who are the governing body with our 55 national associations, and at the same time we have to have dialogue with the clubs and I think the situation can be solved.”

Ceferin, who has crossed the Sahara desert four times by car and once on a motorbike, was elected president of Slovenia’s football federation in 2011 but was not internationally known until he announced he intended to stand in June.