Michel Platini’s winning smile has turned into insider’s smirk

When, two summers ago, the magazine So Foot wished to mark its 10th anniversary, it devoted an issue to the great No 10s. Zico, Scifo, Zidane, Zola, Rivera, Netzer, Valderamma and a few others were reviewed in depth. Paul Gascoigne was there, illustrated by a brilliant photograph of him in England kit giving the fingers to, apparently, an entire stadium.

The cover photo was of another 10. This one was a Juventus player, walking out alone onto pristine turf, back to the camera, number 10 on slim black-and-white stripes, mop of curly hair: Michel Platini. It was the image of a king. This is who Michel Platini was. Platini was beautiful, and it is okay to be seduced by such beauty.

Being French, So Foot might have been expected to select a Frenchman for its cover, but it says something about the prestige of Platini and the love of Platini that, 25 years after he last kicked a ball, he was chosen ahead of a modern great such as Zinedine Zidane.

It was because Platini still means so much as a footballer. He was, truly, a joy to watch. Rewind to footage of his goals and, even on your own, you find yourself muttering aloud. Bloody hell, some player.

Platini was European Footballer of the Year in 1983, '84 and '85. No one, not even Johan Cruyff, won that award three years in a row.

Top scorer

It was at a time when Platini was Serie A top scorer for three consecutive seasons with Juventus, when he led France to the 1984 European Championship title, France’s first-ever major silverware. Platini was voted player of the tournament. He was top scorer with nine goals – nine of 41 in the whole tournament.

Platini had a demeanour, a grin, an explosive subtlety of movement and power. His ability shone through the television screens of Europe. You wanted him to win. He could head a ball, too. In 72 internationals, he scored 41 goals.

And he did all this, not as a number nine, and in an era when goalkeepers and defenders retained the ultimate safety net of keepers collecting back-passes with their hands.

When Platini retired, he then became manager of France and qualified for Euro '92 in Sweden. Only one country per group qualified then and France won all eight qualifiers, beating Spain home and away with a strike force of Jean-Pierre Papin and Eric Cantona.

But France slumped in Sweden, came third in the group in which England came fourth, and went home early. Platini departed. He joined the organising committee for World Cup France '98. His career had gone from pitch to dugout to corridor, from jersey to tracksuit to suit.

The memory of what Michel Platini was is strong but he has been in that ruffled suit a long time now. He had a winning smile then, now he’s got an insider’s smirk.

Then Platini said: "Football: it's a question of intelligence." Now he troubles ours as he fails to explain his proximity to the toxic Sepp Blatter and a delayed payment in the millions from Fifa.

Then again, why did this week’s revelation that Platini received two million Swiss francs from Fifa in 2011 for “work” done between 1999 and 2002 come with a thump of disappointment? This after all is a man who in 2010 voted for Qatar 2022. This after all is someone whose son, Laurent, joined Qatari Sports Investments in 2012.

By then Platini snr had confirmed he was in the room when the French president Nicolas Sarkozy met with the emir of Qatar in Paris in 2007. Or, as Platini stated later: "It was the son of the emir of Qatar and the prime minister of Qatar."

That’s all right, then.

Soon after, as the French journalist Philippe Auclair has pointed out, Qatar bought 60 Airbus 350s from France, and more besides. Later, they bought Paris St-Germain. Qatar owns PSG and World Cup 2022. Many believe it also "owns" Uefa and Fifa and men like Blatter and Platini.

Swapped nationality

Maybe we should not be shocked, but we can still be disappointed. Then you look back and see that at the very end of his playing days, Platini swapped nationality for an afternoon and played an international against the old USSR. It was for Kuwait. He has been getting close to Gulf money for some time.

Platini is not alone in that. It is football culture and many ex-players in particular inhabit a world of entitlement, even some who weren’t very good.

Michel Platini was good. He represented something beautiful, something us wishful-thinkers hoped might bring change. But, no. Platini was on the inside, shrugging, smirking, acting as if the game in boots never finished, it just morphed into one in suits. Pats on the back, money in the bank.

So now he represents something else. In the words of the Swiss authorities, Platini’s somewhere “between a witness and an accused person”, a wheel inside a deal, giving the fingers to an entire planet.