Michel Platini's shown he is an anti-English racist....and the FA must challenge him

Blackleaf

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 9, 2004
48,340
1,650
113
Michel Platini, the UEFA president, has for a long time given people the suspicion that he is anti-English (and there has always seemed to be a bit of an anti-English agenda at UEFA, European football's governing body, as a whole).

The Mirror's Brian Reade used to be dubious about these suspicions - until now.

Last week, the Frenchman Platini laid the blame for all of football's ills firmly at the door of the English, singling out Manchester City’s recent world record £100 million bid for AC Milan's Kaka. He condemned the team for offering such a huge sum on one player, saying it is morally unacceptable.

Yet this is the same Platini who, last July, said this about Real Madrid's £80 million offer for Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo:

“The big clubs always want the best players and I can understand why Real would love to have him. It is normal for a club to want a player if they have the finances.”

So what's with Platini's hypocritical, anti-English views? Is he just jealous that English clubs are so much more successful in European competitions than French clubs, with at least one English team appearing in each European Cup Final since 2005?

So why condemn an English team (which has the finances) for offering vast sums of money for one player, but not a non-English team?

The English FA must challenge the Frenchman now, especially if England still wants to host the 2018 World Cup.

The Daily Mail's Martin Samuel also offers his views on Platini and his various plans....

Michel Platini’s shown he is racist.. and FA must challenge him now


By Brian Reade
21/02/2009
The Mirror

Read Brian Reade’s football column on Mirror.co.uk every Saturday


UEFA president Michel Platini: The Frenchman has anti-English, and hypocritical, views

I spotted Michel Platini walking through the first-class curtain on a flight between Seoul and Tokyo after the opening game of the 2002 World Cup.

Ever-conscious of my duty to Mirror readers, I walked into the realm of clinking Krug glasses, politely explained I was an English journalist and asked if I could have his reaction to Senegal's shock defeat of France.

He looked down his nose at me (which took a while), went “pah!” followed by “non.” When I asked why, he sighed and said it was because we were on a plane.

“No problem. Stay in your seat,” I replied. “No. You go back to yours,” he said, and stared past me at the clouds over the Sea of Japan.

A colleague who’d had dealings with him reckoned it was because he disliked the English and thought I was gloating. So I’ve watched with interest the debate over whether the UEFA president is anti-English or not. And I’d never fully bought the racist line.

Until this week when he addressed the European Parliament about the problems facing football. Now I think it’s proven beyond doubt.

Once again Platini laid the blame for the game’s ills at the door of the English, singling out Manchester City’s recent £100 million bid for Kaka. “Is it morally acceptable to offer such sums of money for a single player?” he implored the Brussels politicians.

And he may well have a point but how does he have the gall to suddenly finger City, when this was his reaction last July to Real Madrid preparing an £80m bid for Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo:

“The big clubs always want the best players and I can understand why Real would love to have him. It is normal for a club to want a player if they have the finances.”

A view endorsed by Platini’s silence when Real were reported to be offering £75m for Kaka back in 2007, and when AC Milan said it was putting aside £90m to buy Ronaldinho. As he says, vast sums will always be paid for the world's best players and if the club has the finances it’s OK? So why are City, who have the finances, suddenly immoral? The clue is the league in which they play.

When he gave his blessing to Real’s £80m bid for Ronaldo he ignored Manchester United’s justified allegations that he was being tapped up. It’s as though Platini wanted the best player in the world out of the English Premier League to weaken it.

Hadn’t he been riled at England providing three of last year’s Champions League semi-finalists and claimed United and Chelsea had “cheated” their way to the final because technically they were in debt to their rich owners? Wasn't he delighted that the national side failed to make it to the Euros, saying: “Will we miss England? No.”

Doesn’t he ignore the situations at AC Milan, kept afloat by Silvio Berlusconi’s fortune and Juventus (by Gianni Agnelli’s), and the constant allegations that public money is siphoned into Real Madrid?

Platini may be right to advocate salary and transfer caps. But by continually citing the Premier League as the root of all evil, he proves his critics right. He is anti-English.

And it’s time someone at the FA loudly challenged this unacceptable bias from the leader of European football. Because if they don’t, at the very least they can wave goodbye to their precious 2018 World Cup bid.
***********************************************************

Platini plan is off limits

Martin Samuel
23rd February 2009
Daily Mail

Michel Platini, president of UEFA, lobbied the European Union last week with his proposals for limits on transfer spending.

He wants expenditure on transfers and wages to be capped at 60 per cent of revenue, a measure that would cement the status quo of elite club domination with no parvenu interlopers, just as it does in France, where Lyon are closing in on an eighth straight league title, thanks to the regulations Platini proposes.



Rendez-vous: Platini meets European Parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering (left)

By doing this, and by enforcing stringent rules on debt, Platini also hopes to reduce the strength of English clubs in Europe. He never acknowledges that many English clubs are in debt because of stadium rebuilds, while rivals on the Continent receive government assistance for similar projects (which English teams do not receive).

Nantes, for instance, where club president Waldemar Kita (who is Polish, so foreign ownership is clearly not an English preserve as some at UEFA would have us believe), has announced plans to build a new stadium with a view to it being used in the 2016 European Championship.

The winner of that bidding process is not announced until May 2010 but no matter, because the city council will be picking up a large part of the tab. Indeed, the project is now being evaluated by the sports rights agency SPORTFIVE, where the son of a certain UEFA president is employed.

So that’s the way to do it.
******************************************



Nice guy? Platini

Taking the Michel...

Martin Samuel
16th February 2009
Daily Mail

Amid his usual ramble about addressing the problem of uncompetitive leagues, by introducing the same regulations that have made the French league the most uncompetitive in Europe, one comment from Michel Platini went unnoticed.

The UEFA president said he would like to present this season’s Champions League trophy to his old club, Juventus. This would be the same club that was stripped of its 2004-05 and 2005-06Serie A titles for rigging matches with favourable referees.

Juventus were deducted 30 points and relegated to Serie C1 as punishment, but had that reduced to a slap on the wrist — nine points and relegation to Serie B — on appeal.

Now they are heading back to the top again. Who says nice guys don’t finish first — or that Platini is not the friend of all that is right and fair in football?

mirror.co.uk
dailymail.co.uk
 
Last edited:

gopher

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 26, 2005
21,513
65
48
Minnesota: Gopher State
Michel Platini was my all time favorite footballer. Nobody played with greater intensity or had more fun on the field than he did. How I wish we could have had him in the old North American Soccer League, especially as a member of the Cosmos.

As for his apparent change of heart, I believe it was motivated in part by pressures from leagues who want to lower their costs. After all, Europe is in recession as is the USA and everybody is pinching their pennies as we Yanks say. I agree that he should always take a consistent position on transfer fees and other excessive costs. Therefore, he should clarify that he wishes to impose this new standard on ALL teams and leagues. This way there will not be any bad blood among the Euro leagues or leave any appearance of prejudice.