Baku, October 8, AZERTAC

The two most powerful figures in world football are on the brink of losing their thrones, according to the Daily Mail.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter and UEFA chief Michel Platini are both facing 90-day suspensions that will effectively end their reigns. It will also knock Platini out of the FIFA presidential race, which he had started as the hottest of favourites.

The investigatory chamber of FIFA's ethics committee are understood to have recommended the immediate suspension of the pair in another extraordinary development in the FIFA corruption scandal.

This follows the ethics committee's inquiry into the £1.35million payment Platini received in 2011 for consultancy work for Blatter nine years earlier, a time lag which he has yet to explain.

Blatter is also being investigated for selling World Cup TV rights to his FIFA colleague Jack Warner at a knock-down price that later netted the Trinidadian an £11m profit.

Now FIFA's adjudicatory chamber, headed by Hans-Joachim Eckert, has to decide — probably by the end of the week — whether to rubber-stamp both suspensions.

Those bans would see Blatter and Platini out of office until early January — and should effectively end Blatter's 17-year reign in charge of world football's wholly tarnished governing body and Platini's eight-year tenure as president of UEFA.

But, such are the machinations in Zurich, Blatter supporters are clinging to the hope that he can still return to office, since nearly all the presidential candidates may be discredited in the meantime.