Michel Platini was one of the best players of his generation, the highlight of his career coming at the European Championships in 1984 when he led France to victory, scoring 9 goals in the process.
When I found out he was voted in as the president of UEFA in 2007, I was pleasantly surprised, having an ex-player overseeing the running and development of the game could only be a positive.
He would see things from a different perspective to the other UEFA and FIFA executives, he would see them from a player’s perspective, and that could only be beneficial to football.
Sadly that hasn’t turned out to be the case, as ever since he assumed office his ideas and initiatives have all been a bit barmy.
It was his idea to introduce the extra 5th and 6th official to stand behind the goal with their plastic baton’s doing absolutely nothing, he is against the idea that goal line technology should be introduced.
He has implemented the expansion of the European Championships from 16 to 24 teams, I’m very interested to see how that’s going to work with six groups of four, unless he’s planning four groups of six.
Then yesterday to top it all off he announced he was working on an idea to play the Euro’s in 2020 across multiple cities, up to as many as 13.
I don’t even know where to begin with this, other than to say just because the idea came into your head doesn’t necessarily mean you have to share it with everyone else, staging a tournament of this magnitude in two countries is a logistical nightmare in itself, so how many more problems will arise when teams have to play in Manchester, Madrid and then Moscow all within 7 or 8 days.
Hopefully this is just a bit of blue-sky thinking and in reality it will never actually materialise, but the fact that it’s even being suggested as an option is bad enough.
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