Michel Platini is Serious

When I was a kid, my favourite footballer was Michel Platini. He was a brilliant player. Obviously French but I couldn’t hold that against him because he was a joy to watch.

Sometimes childhood heroes should fade away, never to return. Leave me with my grainy memories of a wizard in blue with magic in his feet.

But sometimes they come back and sometimes it isn’t a pretty sight.

Michel Platini is now the President of UEFA which makes him a pretty powerful man. I’m not against powerful men, per se, but when a powerful man has crackpot ideals, they become dangerous men.

I don’t know what England ever did to Michel Platini but he doesn’t seem to like us very much and has spent the last few years criticising us whenever the opportunity arose.

He would like us to think that it is because he cares for our game. That he does what he does and says what he says for our benefit.

This, of course, is nonsense. Michel Platini is fuelled by jealousy and a small mentality that comes from coming from a country with an inferiority complex.

I have just been reading an interview he gave back in 2007 when he was slating the English game, saying how we had “lost our soul”, how there weren’t any English managers at top level, how the young English players are never given the chance, how other countries have more representatives from their respective countries in the Champions League.

As part of the evidence for this, he bizarrely chose to offer the following statistics:-

“But when you have 95 registered Brazilian players in the Champions League, 94 French players and only 45 English players, when you have twice as many players from the other big nations than English, then it is difficult.”

Someone should have taken the little Frenchman aside at that point and pointed out to him that Brazil is not in Europe and that the four English teams contesting the Champions League that season did not have 95 Brazilians on the books between them. Clearly, the “problem” (if, indeed, it is a problem) was not solely with English football.

He continued in this interview with:-

“When I was at Juventus [did anybody else catch the irony there? - TRD] and I played against Arsenal or Aston Villa or West Ham, they had 10 or 11 English players. If you are Man United you need to have some players from Manchester. Children will identify with it. Generally football is in a good state across Europe but in England you have to take care.”

Umm… I’ll let the hypocrisy go, it doesn’t need comment but why pick on Manchester United at that point? Has he never heard of Paul Scholes? Gary Neville? Ryan Giggs (who moved to Manchester when he was six years old)? We have one of the best youth academies in England and whilst it is perhaps true that not enough make the grade at senior level these days, Fergie does as much as he possibly can to give the more promising players their chance to shine on the big stage.

This has all led to Platini’s “6+5 Rule” which he wants to bring in so that all European teams must consist of six home international players and five foreign players.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong for all kinds of reasons and I’ll give a couple here.

The main argument is that it will allow home-grown players the chance to play at top level as too many of the top sides now buy in foreign players who take the place of home-grown talent.

Umm… why do the top clubs do this? Could it be because there aren’t enough home-grown players who are good enough?

If I was Fergie, would I want to bring in a lad from Manchester who is already living here, has his friends and family all around him, can speak the language (ok, there aren’t many of us in Manchester what can, innit) and has been an avid Manchester United supporter since the day his dad took him to Old Trafford when he was four or would I rather bring in someone from Argentina who has no true allegiance to the club, has no family or friends here and who only knows the word “difficul”?

The only reason I would opt for the Argentinian player is the most important reason – he is a better player than anyone I have in the youth ranks.

As supporters, we would love Manchester United to be full of local (or at least English) lads which is why we loved the Busby Babes and why we loved the “Class of 92″ but, with all the will in the world, we accept that a group of players like that come along only once in a blue moon.

What we will not accept however, is being shortchanged. We pay good money to watch football and we want to see the best players our Club can buy out on the field. We want to know that our club can go out and buy the talent required to improve weaker areas in the team and whether that player comes from Manchester or Mozambique doesn’t really matter so long as he is the best player.

Racism has always been a problem in France and up until fairly recently was a problem in the English game. There have been many fancy reasons why racism has not been such a big issue in England as it was in years gone by but my own theory is the influx of foreign players. It is difficult, for example, to say, “I hate French people” when Eric Cantona is French and Patrice Evra is French.

Football brings people together through a common goal. Supporters, players and managers of any one club are all in it together and when we see a foreign player score the goal that wins us the game, we just see a brilliant player doing something extraordinary that has given us incredible joy. In short, and to paraphrase MLK, the colour of his skin is of no more importance than the colour of his eyes.

Now, Platini and his circus troupe want us to embrace regression, division and, when you really think about it, racism.

I was watching something on Sky Sports News yesterday about young players in Cameroon who dream of playing in the Premier League. For young people in these deprived places, the chance of joining a big club is not only a career move, it is a new life. A chance to escape from poverty and a short, bleak future.

If you look at some of the best players in the modern era, it is amazing how many came from poor backgrounds and sought footballing fame and fortune in countries far away from their birthplace. An escape route Platini would like to see closed for these talented young boys with big dreams.

The other reason why the foreigners rule should not make a comeback is because it makes a mockery of football and us Manchester United supporters will never forget the farcical situation we endured back in 1994 when we faced Barcelona in the Champions League.

Barcelona at the time were just as awesome as they are today whilst we were still a team coming to terms with being a rather successful club again.

We had held them to 2-2 at Old Trafford so the chips were down really whatever we did at the Nou Camp. Barcelona absolutely battered us and the final score was 4-0. This would have been tough to take in any situation but the fact that we had to play the game without Eric Cantona and Peter Schmeichel because of some “foreigners rule” just made it seem quite ridiculous.

It was like someone saying to David as he walked up to Goliath, “Sorry son, the Valley of Elah has a no-slings policy.”

What made the foreigners rule more stupid at the time was that it only applied to these European competitions, not the Premier League so basically, if you had too many foreigners in your team, the team that qualified for the Champions League was not the same as the team participating in it. Farcical.

And Captain Platini wants to bring a version of this back into football because we English are killing our National game and English football is suffering as a consequence.

Sorry Michel but the Premier League has rarely been so exciting and so full of quality players. As for our National side. Did you even see us against Croatia the other week?

Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney scored the goals. All top drawer world-class English players brought through the ranks at English clubs and now playing for top quality Premier League sides.

Michel Platini would prefer us to tell these players and the many others that will follow that we actually don’t rate them that highly and they only make their Premier League teams because of the quotas. Charming.

Ahh but Platini doesn’t stop there. He has other plans in store for these mega-rich clubs who commit the heinous crime of scouting and buying all the best players.

Of course, it isn’t targeted solely at the big clubs, everyone will have to abide by the new rules so, it’s “fair”.

His latest big idea which has been approved by UEFA is that from 2012, teams will be banned from spending more than they make from their revenues.

Tired of seeing big money men taking over English Clubs and buying all the best players in the world when no one seems all that interested in doing the same for French clubs, he has decided enough is enough. “Financial fair play” is what England needs.

Of course, this is not solely aimed at English clubs and is also an attack on Real Madrid who suddenly found around £200 Million down the back of the Executive sofa in the summer and bought everyone they wanted, including, of course, promising French starlet Karim Benzema from Lyon.  Michel must have choked on his Beaujolais when he heard that news!

I have not studied the finer points of his “Financial Fair Play” rule (if you get into this stuff too much, you end up looking like Michel Platini, and with three kids, I don’t want to look like the scary circus clown, thanks all the same) but I cannot see for the life of me how it will help at all.

We have in England “The Big Four”. We have had this “big four” for years now and only once every blue moon or so does another club break into it.

These four teams obviously always finish at the top of the League, thus getting more money than anyone else from the Premier League. These teams get all the lucrative sponsorship deals and these teams always play in the sea of cash that is the Champions League.

So, I ask: Who is going to have the most money to spend on players in 2012?

How difficult is it going to be for clubs outside the “Big Four” to compete when spending can only come from revenues when they are already stuggling to compete?

Manchester City have made tons of headlines over the last twelve months or so due to the massive injection of Saudi Arabian cash which has allowed them to go after the best players in the world. We have, at last, a middling club who look like being serious challengers to that “Big Four” this season.

There are four places and five teams with a genuine chance of filling them but obviously one team is going to miss out.

Is this good for our game? Or bad for our game?

Well, if Manchester City do grab a Champions League spot at the expense of your team, you are likely to say it’s bad. If you’re a Manchester City supporter, you’re likely to say it’s good.

The chance of a filthy rich Arab with more oil than sense coming along and buying their club is the stuff dreams are made of for supporters of some clubs.

Now even that “lottery ticket” has been taken away from them.  Now you have to grind away, attempting to compete against sides whose revenues are always more than your own and the gap ever-widening.

A hopeless, futile future beckons if you’re not in the “Big Four” by 2012.

I sit and wait with baited breath to hear what Platini comes up with next. UEFA funded grants for countries whose name begins with ‘F’ perhaps?