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Dutch candidate faces budget campaign for UEFA position

UEFA executive committee member Michael van Praag leaves the UEFA executive committee meeting in Basel, Switzerland May 18, 2016. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich (Reuters)

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – - Michael van Praag, the only declared candidate so far to become the new president of UEFA, is not going to mount a lavish campaign. The Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) will give him 50,000 euros (37,911 pounds) to finance his effort. Bert van Oostveen, the KNVB director for professional football, had a suggestion for making the money go further: "Europe is small, and easyJet fly to a lot of destinations." Directing van Praag to a budget airline does not mean he lacks support from KNVB, of which he is the president, to become the head of European football’s governing body. "UEFA can use the seniority and experience of Van Praag," van Oostveen told reporters in Zeist, the Netherlands, after a meeting of clubs. "But in eastern Europe, we have to get this message across, because there is still a lot of disunity there at this time." Van Praag had a 400,000-euro budget from the KNVG to back his bid for the presidency of FIFA, world football's governing body, last year. He used half of it before withdrawing. This time, he is hoping to replace Michel Platini when a new president of UEFA is chosen in Athens on Sept. 14. Platini and former FIFA president Sepp Blatter were banned from the sport for eight years - eventually reduced to six years for Blatter and four years for Platini - in 2015. The cause was two million Swiss francs ($2.02 million) that FIFA paid Platini in 2011, with Blatter's approval, for work done a decade earlier. FIFA's ethics committee said the payment, made when Blatter was seeking re-election, lacked transparency and presented conflicts of interest. Both men denied wrongdoing. (Reporting by Mark Gleeson; Editing by Larry King)