This is a collection of photos chosen by AP photo editors.
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff speaks during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Delegates hold up signs as Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff speaks during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Former President Barack Obama, left, hugs former first lady Michelle Obama before speaking during Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
Former President Barack Obama speaking at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The sun sets as Shiite pilgrims march on their way to Karbala for Arbaeen in Babil, Iraq, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Clouds float past a supermoon over the Jhelum River in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)
Former President Evo Morales, below center, the current MAS party president, gives a news conference in El Alto, Bolivia, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
LGBTQ+ people and their supporters dance and rally during the annual pride parade, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks on crime and safety during a campaign event at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Howell, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Waorani Indigenous women take part in a demonstration demanding authorities comply with the provisions of a popular consultation that puts an end to oil extraction in a sector of the Amazon where Indigenous people live, in Quito, Ecuador, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Alexei Liptser, left, and Vadim Kobzev, lawyers for Alexei Navalny, are seen on the screen in a video link provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service during a session in Moscow City Court as the court considers an appeal on the pretrial detention, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony to lay flowers at the City of Angels cemetery, where the victims of the 2004 Beslan school siege were buried, in Beslan, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Vladimir Astapkovich, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Bohdan Scherbyna, 9, with his mother Maryna Scherbyna, 45, and sister Angelina Scherbyna, 14, left, arrive in an armoured van belonging to the emergency service Fenix team during the evacuation of local people from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Emergency services at the scene of the search for a missing boat, in Porticello, southern Italy, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. Rescue teams and divers returned to the site of a storm-sunken superyacht Tuesday to search for six people, including British tech magnate Mike Lynch, who are believed to be still trapped in the hull 50 meters (164-feet) underwater. (AP Photo/Salvatore Cavalli)
Displaced Palestinians sit next to their tent as they camp on the beach, west of Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A demonstrator and a counter protester argue near the Israeli Consulate during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta Speaks during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Members of the Wisconsin delegation watch during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., watches during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
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Bohdan Scherbyna, 9, with his mother Maryna Scherbyna, 45, and sister Angelina Scherbyna, 14, left, arrive in an armoured van belonging to the emergency service Fenix team during the evacuation of local people from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
This is a collection of photos chosen by AP photo editors.
Delegates hold up signs as Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff speaks during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Former President Barack Obama, left, hugs former first lady Michelle Obama before speaking during Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
Former President Barack Obama speaking at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The sun sets as Shiite pilgrims march on their way to Karbala for Arbaeen in Babil, Iraq, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Clouds float past a supermoon over the Jhelum River in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)
Former President Evo Morales, below center, the current MAS party president, gives a news conference in El Alto, Bolivia, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
LGBTQ+ people and their supporters dance and rally during the annual pride parade, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks on crime and safety during a campaign event at the Livingston County Sheriff's Office, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Howell, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Waorani Indigenous women take part in a demonstration demanding authorities comply with the provisions of a popular consultation that puts an end to oil extraction in a sector of the Amazon where Indigenous people live, in Quito, Ecuador, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
Alexei Liptser, left, and Vadim Kobzev, lawyers for Alexei Navalny, are seen on the screen in a video link provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service during a session in Moscow City Court as the court considers an appeal on the pretrial detention, in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony to lay flowers at the City of Angels cemetery, where the victims of the 2004 Beslan school siege were buried, in Beslan, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russia, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (Vladimir Astapkovich, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Bohdan Scherbyna, 9, with his mother Maryna Scherbyna, 45, and sister Angelina Scherbyna, 14, left, arrive in an armoured van belonging to the emergency service Fenix team during the evacuation of local people from Selidove to safe areas, in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Emergency services at the scene of the search for a missing boat, in Porticello, southern Italy, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. Rescue teams and divers returned to the site of a storm-sunken superyacht Tuesday to search for six people, including British tech magnate Mike Lynch, who are believed to be still trapped in the hull 50 meters (164-feet) underwater. (AP Photo/Salvatore Cavalli)
Displaced Palestinians sit next to their tent as they camp on the beach, west of Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A demonstrator and a counter protester argue near the Israeli Consulate during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta Speaks during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Members of the Wisconsin delegation watch during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., watches during the Democratic National Convention Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
GENEVA (AP) — Soccer great Zvonimir Boban says he does not want to be president of UEFA.
It needed “a real football man,” he suggested on Thursday, in a barb at technocrats who he claimed think they are bigger than the game.
The former Croatia and AC Milan player resigned as UEFA chief of football in January in protest at president Aleksander Čeferin moving to change legal statutes that would let him stay in office longer.
Čeferin later called Boban a clown and his allies suggested the dramatic exit was positioning to one day challenge for the presidency — a claim denied in an interview with Italian daily Gazzetta dello Sport published on Thursday.
“I don’t have any interest. But a real football man in UEFA is really needed,” said Boban, who previously had a senior role at FIFA under its president Gianni Infantino. He left in 2019 to work for Milan.
“In that sense, I say it with bitterness, having fought for changes at UEFA, like FIFA before that, I was of no use for anything,” Boban said.
UEFA was approached for comment.
Čeferin and Infantino are both lawyers first elected in 2016 in fallout from turmoil at UEFA and FIFA during American and Swiss federal investigations of international soccer officials. Infantino was previously UEFA general secretary for more than six years.
“Unfortunately for years the soccer technocracy has been all the rage inside the system, depriving it of its values, which instead it should always represent and defend,” Boban told Gazzetta.
“These people think they’re more important than the game, than the players, than the coaches, than the fans and even the actual soccer institutions,” he said.
Boban joined UEFA in 2021 to be a senior advisor to Čeferin, who called his former advisor a clown in February at the UEFA Congress.
“I’m sorry about the way our relationship ended,” Boban said on Thursday, adding they had not spoken since.
Boban resigned in January citing his “total disapproval” of the legal move that would let Čeferin stay in office for 15 years through 2031.
UEFA has a 12-year term limit for its president among anti-corruption reforms passed in response to the criminal investigations that rocked international soccer bodies.
However, Čeferin steered through an amendment approved by UEFA member federations in February that would not count his first three years — technically completing the mandate of predecessor Michel Platini, who was removed from office — against his 12-year limit.
Within hours, Čeferin then pledged he will leave office in 2027 and not seek a final four-year mandate.
Some of UEFA's 55 member federations have since said they support their Slovenian leader staying on.
AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf in Rome contributed.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Cristiano Ronaldo, the all-time leading goalscorer in the Champions League, receives a special award from UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin in recognition of his achievements in the competition, during the Champions League, league phase, draw, in Monaco, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Former Juventus and PSG Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon receives the 2024 UEFA President's Award from UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin during the Champions League, league phase, draw, in Monaco, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
FILE - Zvonimir Bobanin Kazan, Russia, on Nov. 26, 2016. Former UEFA official Zvonimir Boban, has been talking Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024 about why he resigned in January in a dispute with its president Aleksander Ceferin. He says he does not want to be UEFA president. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File)