LONDON – A moment that prepared Aleksander Ceferin for the stresses and tensions running European football came three decades ago, in a far graver moment for the continent.
The law graduate was relaxing at his family home in Slovenia on June 25, 1991, sitting on the terrace with his parents, brother and sister and their partners when a man approached. “He said ‘Aleksander Ceferin?' I said ‘Yes.' He said, ‘War has started.
You go with us,'" Ceferin recalls. "It was crazy. I was shocked.” Ceferin was conscripted just as his tiny nation, nestled between the Alps and the Adriatic Sea, declared independence from multi-ethnic Yugoslavia.