Zurich (AFP) – The election of Aleksander Ceferin to succeed the disgraced Michel Platini at the head of UEFA was a clear message from within of a desire for change, FIFA supremo Gianni Infantino said Friday.

Ceferin is an accomplished lawyer with little record in football before he became head of the Slovenian federation in 2011.

In a vote for the UEFA presidency on Wednesday, he hammered the body’s vice president Michael van Praag of the Netherlands 42-13 in what many saw as a call for a fresh start.

“It was a very convincing success,” Infantino said at a press conference in Zurich.

“He has some very good ideas, he is a new face for many but he is a very competent person, head of a national association. I am looking very much forward to working closely with him,” said the FIFA president.

AS UEFA chief Ceferin also takes up a position as a FIFA vice-president, and some of the Slovenian’s detractors have suggested he is in Infantino’s pocket.

The FIFA boss dismissed these fears as ridiculous.

“Mr Ceferin has said it himself — this is imagination and lies. The result speaks for itself: it’s an insult to the intelligence of the 55 associations who go and vote,” he said.

Ceferin, an athletic man who has crossed the Sahara five times in cars and on a motor bike, brushed aside reports of behind-the-scenes backers and deals as “simple lies”.

He was publicly backed by football powers such as Italy, France and Germany, as well as Russia. Scandinavian countries also gave strong support, as did smaller nations in eastern Europe.