Michel Platini, who made his name as an outstanding player and then took on the role of coaching France, is in his third career, as an administrator of the game. The announcement by the Swiss attorney general that its criminal investigation into Sepp Blatter includes an alleged “disloyal payment” to Platini, president of European football’s governing body, Uefa, has landed on Platini just as he has seemed unassailably on course to replace Blatter as Fifa president, reports The Guardian.
Born in Joeuf, France, Platini graduated as a prodigy through his local club, then bigger French clubs in Nancy and St-Etienne, before joining Juventus in 1982. Three times European footballer of the year, he captained France to become European champions in 1984, and won the European Cup with Juventus the following year, in a final played at Brussels’ Heysel stadium against Liverpool, despite the terrible crushing disaster in which 39 Juventus fans died.
Platini’s penalty decided that match and at his peak he was one of the finest goalscoring midfielders of any generation. He contributed nine of the 14 goals France scored from five matches in their triumphant campaign at Euro 84.
During his stint in charge of his national team Platini qualified for the 1992 European Championship with a perfect record but a first-round elimination from the tournament in Sweden led him to resign and focus his energy on football administration.
He and Blatter were allies when Platini took his first steps into the cut-throat corridors of football politics, as co-chairman of France’s organising committee for hosting the 1998 World Cup. That led to a position on Uefa’s technical development committee and advisory work for Fifa, followed in 2002 by election as a Uefa representative to Fifa’s executive committee.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.