Once upon a time, there was a Frenchman who played for Juventus in Turin. He was considered a gift from the gods, and his playing style was far above even that of his team-mates.
He won the Ballon d’Or playing for Juventus and was affectionately called ‘The King of Turin’. Some fans would go far enough to call him the greatest French player ever. Can you guess who we’re talking about here? We’ll give you a hint, it’s not Zinedine Zidane.
The player we’ll discuss today is the 3-time Ballon d’Or winner, Michel Platini. We’ll take a look at his story, especially his performances for France. More interestingly, we’ll try to understand where it all went wrong for him and why he’s considered one of football’s most controversial football personalities.
The Early Days Of Michel Platini
Michel was born on the 21st of June 1955 in an area called ‘Jœuf’, a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France.
Michel’s grand-father Francesco Platini was an Italian that had settled in France after the first world war. Michel’s father, Aldo was a professional footballer and a long-time director for AS Nancy, the club where Michel would later start his professional career.
For the years between 1969 and 1972, Platini had bad luck with football trials and had trouble finding a club he could represent, for instance he performed quite poorly in the finals
of a youth competition held in 1969.
A couple of years later in a tournament organized by the French Football Federation between various clubs in the under-18 age group, Platini impressed scouts as he represented Jœuf juniors against a Metz junior side.
Another trial at Metz went horribly wrong when a breathing test on a spirometer caused Platini to faint. The doctor’s verdict on Platini’s breathing difficulties and weak heart ended any hopes Platini
had of playing for his boyhood favorites. He would then later join the reserve side of the same club his father played for, FC Nancy in September 1972.
Start Of A Beautiful Career
The transition from the Nancy reserves to the first team wasn’t hard for Michel Platini. He impressed the coaches and the players really quickly, among his many exceptional performances
against opposition teams.
One specific game that stood out was one where he scored a hat-trick in a reserve team match against Wittelsheim. Soon after he was introduced to the first team squad, but it was misfortune
that ruled him out initially, as during a reserves game a few days earlier, a hefty challenge from an opponent left Platini with a bad ankle injury.
His season however would finish on a much more positive note, and he would go on to make his senior league debut against Nîmes on the 3rd of May 1973.
In March of 1974 Platini suffered a double fracture on his arm ruling him out of the remainder
of the season and he was unable to help keep FC Nancy afloat as they were relegated from Ligue 1.
The next season is where Platini started to show the French division how special he really was. He would go on to score 17 goals for Nancy, many of them came from his freekicks. Platini seemed to have honed his talent of taking freekicks completely as they began to become his specialty.
He would regularly practice his freekicks with a friend he made in the Nancy team reserves. A goalkeeper who went by the name of Jean-Michel Moutier, he would use a row of dummies as a wall to simulate the real game situation.
Nancy’s promotion came at the same time as Platini’s military service, and hence Michel was not always available even though he tried to make it to the games as frequently as possible. His colleagues in the battalion included his Nancy teammates Olivier Rouyer and Jean-Michel Moutier,
as well as Maxime Bossis, who would also later join him as a regular in the French national team.
Misfortune struck again in a match against Laval as he scored a hattrick right before getting a knee injury in the same game. Press reports would claim that this would be the end of his season once again and that a major knee surgery was required to make sure Platini was back to his best.
However, he would come right back only 2 weeks later but would leave the field injured
once again after a 4-1 loss to Marseille.
Platini’s Les Blues Journey
During his military service he would try out for the French Military side and was also called to represent the French under 23 team along with the French National team.
During his tenure with the French Olympic, team he impressed everyone once again as his performances were making headlines back home in France. After a phenomenal display
against a full strength Romanian side in the Olympics, Michel received his first call up to the French National team as his namesake Michel Hidalgo took the reins for his first ever French national team game in charge.
Platini would go on to score his first ever international goal with a trademark freekick against Czechoslovakia in Paris, the game ended 2 goals a piece.
By the time the 1976 Olympics in Montreal came along, Platini was a regular in the French National Team. The French national team began their tournament with a 4–1 win over Mexico. They then registered another 4–1 victory in their next match against Guatemala, with two goals from Platini.
The French team completed the group stage with a draw against Israel, where Platini scored
another goal in the form of a penalty. Les Blues would eventually bow out of the tournament in the quarterfinals with a 4-0 loss to a full-strength East German team, who would go on to win the tournament.
Following his sensational display at the Olympics, Platini signed his first professional contract as he put pen to paper with FC Nancy. Platini would then go on to score 110 goals with Nancy in 182 appearances.
He was instrumental in helping France secure qualification for the FIFA World Cup being held in Argentina. This was the French team’s first appearance in the World Cup since 1966. Before traveling to Argentina for the World Cup, Platini won the first major trophy of his playing career,
captaining Nancy to victory in the 1978 French Cup against Nice and scoring the only goal of the game.
As France prepared for the world cup through the form of friendlies against international teams, it was one friendly that France played against Italy in Naples in 1978 that would prove to be a very significant one in Michel’s career trajectory as he would beat Italian goalkeeper Dino Zoff from two direct free-kicks, the first being ruled out because the referee had not blown his whistle but minutes later Platini had the ball in the Italian net from another free-kick.
Zoff attempted to participate the flight of the ball by positioning himself on the left side of the goal, only for Platini to find the unguarded area of the net with his free-kick, leaving Zoff rooted to the spot.
Platini’s duels with Zoff and his performance in a match that was broadcast on Italian television
made him well known in Italy.
As the 1978 World Cup in Argentina rolled up, France were drawn in one of the most exciting world cup groups of all time. Their group contained Italy, Hungary and hosts Argentina. France began their campaign with a match up against Italy.
Italian coach Enzo Bearzot had been paying pretty close attention to Platini’s gameplay over the last 4-5 months and had devised a plan for the French star. Bearzot had instructed
Marco Tardelli to man mark Platini the whole game and Marco did exactly as he was told.
Italy would end up winning this match 2-1. The next game against the hosts saw France lose their second game in a row. This meant qualification for them was no longer possible, France were knocked out in the group stage.
EUROS 1984
After reaching the semifinals in the 1982 World Cup, France went into the 1984 Euros bursting with confidence. Led by captain Michel Platini, they went 3 wins in 3 games in the group stage.
The semi final was one of the most exciting matches of the tournament, as Portugal and France went head to head. After a 1-1 draw in 90 minutes, Rui Jurado scored for Portugal in the 98th minute to make it 2-1.
A French equalizer came in the 114th minute and just as everyone thought that penalties were up next, Platini scored a winner in the last minute of the game. He scored a free kick in the final against Spain, and France ended up winning the match 2-0 after another 90th minute goal from Bellone.
Platini was the top scorer of the tournament and ended up scoring 9 goals. Platini was absolutely phenomenal in the tournament and lifted the trophy with his teammates.
After another World Cup semi final exit in 1986, Platini retired a year later in April 1987. He played 72 games for France and scored 41 goals. He was revered as an all time great and was even talked about in the same breath as Diego Maradona at times.
So how come we don’t hear his name ringing in such discussions these days? The answer is something which happened years after his playing career was over.
Platini; From Grace To Grass
Platini became the UEFA president in 2007 and started off quite ambitiously. He had a great vision for the sport and very clearly cared about introducing some rules to improve it. Some of his takes
might have been a bit controversial, but for the most part he did legitimately good work. But the House of cards fell over in 2015, when Platini was banned from all football related activities after allegedly colluding with Sepp Blatter over a shady, backdated payment.
The infamous FIFA president was also given a ban. The Ethics Committee reduced Platini’s 8 year sentence to 4 years. But again in 2022, he was speculated to have been involved
in the shady bidding process.
These allegations hurt his reputation a lot and once a highly respected player was now seen in a bad light of being corrupted. Ever since his image was tarnished, people stopped talking about his genuine ability as a player as his latter years overshadowed previous successes.
It makes you wonder just how important the image of a footballer is off-the-pitch even if we’re
discussing their abilities on the pitch.
Do you think Platini would be considered in the same league as Johan Cryuff, or Maradona, if not for his image now? Was he even better than Zidane?
Let us know your thoughts using the comments section below this post.
Thank you for reading.