Zvonimir Boban Resigns From UEFA Leadership

Zvonimir Boban, a top aide and longtime confidant to the powerful president of European soccer’s governing body, resigned abruptly on Wednesday, a departure that laid bare a deep rift inside the leadership of one of the world’s richest sports organizations.

Mr. Boban’s sudden exit from the governing body, UEFA, which oversees soccer in 55 nations and organizes billion-dollar competitions like the Champions League and the European Championship, signaled growing disquiet among some of the continent’s soccer leaders at efforts to significantly change the organization’s rules.

One of the most contentious revisions under consideration would allow UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin of Slovenia, to remain in his role beyond a 12-year term limit imposed as part of a suite of reforms enacted after a corruption scandal that shook international soccer almost a decade ago.

“Despite having expressed my deepest concern and total disapproval, the UEFA president does not consider there to be any legal issues with the proposed changes, let alone any moral or ethical ones, and he intends to move forward regardless in pursuit of his personal aspirations,” Mr. Boban said in a lengthy statement sent to The New York Times.

Mr. Boban’s exit from his role as UEFA’s first director of football, a position created for him in 2021, made public growing tensions among some of European soccer’s top leadership. Those concerns have been festering since a board meeting in Hamburg, Germany, in December when the suggestion of tweaks to the term limits of senior leadership were first proposed.

News media reports at the time said David Gill, a longtime English soccer executive, publicly questioned the need for the changes. He pointed out that the shift essentially exempts any time served on the executive committee before July 2017 from the term limits. That would potentially allow a figure like Mr. Gill to stay in his post for 20 years, something he argued would be at least against the spirit of the original governance reforms. Mr. Ceferin, a lawyer, was first elected UEFA president in 2016.