Still, extol he did, selling at length a tale of a triumphant tenure in Nyon that began in 2007 and will now run until 2015 at the least. The story so far, he stated, was one of near-unmitigated success, with equity in UEFA competitions, financial prudence off the pitch, and fairness on it all cornerstones of his first term.
Yet a bit of closer examination shows that, while Platini has never struggled in the rhetoric stakes, in every single area of his mandate he has consistently under-delivered.
How much of this is down to any failing on his part and how much is down to his vision being simply impossible to realise is open to debate, but one thing is clear and undeniable: there is a huge gap between Michel Platini’s words and Michel Platini’s deeds.
The Path of Champions
The perfect example is Champions League reform. Platini, to his credit, managed to push through a number of changes to Europe’s premier competition early in his administration – but not nearly so many as he tried. Gone by the wayside, for example, was the faintly ludicrous idea of welcoming domestic cup winners to the Champions League.
Still, his much-vaunted drive to get smaller nations’ teams into the group stage more easily – no small part of his campaign to become president in the first place – came to fruition in modest form with the Champions Path initiative, in which league winners are placed in their own protective bubble during qualifying, so as to spare them the might of fourth-placed teams and the like from major nations.
On Tuesday Platini was pleased as punch with how this scheme had turned out, trumpeting the fact that FC Copenhagen – a team very easy on the eye and with a great fanbase, winning them much admiration – had reached the last sixteen this year. (The fact that Copenhagen were seeded third in their group, and came up against comfortably the worst second seeds, Panathinaikos, couldn’t have hurt the Parken side in their quest for advancement.) To see a side from a smaller country at such a high level is indeed curious, but from listening to Platini one would think it unprecedented.
In fact that’s not the case: prior to the introduction of the path, in recent years we’ve seen Panathinaikos, Celtic, Olympiacos, Lille, Rangers, Sparta Prague, Lokomotiv Moscow and plenty more rub shoulders with the other fifteen knockout stage competitors, and most of these teams were domestic champions. Did they need a leg-up? Hardly.
Furthermore the problem of inequality has arguably in fact merely been pushed down a level, from the earlier stages of European competition to the highest end of domestic leagues in middling nations, and in this sense even Platini’s success stories have their darker sides. Take MSK Zilina for example.
The Slovakian side heroically powered through from the lowly second qualifying round to the group stage, beating Sparta Prague at the conclusion of the non-champions path. Their participation in the group stage will be rewarded with a figure not too short of €8 million, making them clear winners in Platini’s drive for “democracy in the access list”. Well-earned, to be sure – but the Slovakian league itself now features a club with a vast financial advantage. At time of writing, Zilina predictably top their league again.
What’s more, the aforementioned Copenhagen, far from being plucky minnows, are about to secure their third consecutive Danish League title and their fifth in sixth years, with no sign of slowing down. Another year’s worth of European revenues – to which they are more than entitled – will only serve to increase their dominance.
Again, there’s no questioning the capital club’s fine management, exciting young squad and sound infrastructure, but if Platini is serious about equality then he should have his eye on this level of the game as well, as Copenhagen’s reaching the last 16 has greater impact at home than it does in Europe.
In any case, the vast majority of the Champions League setup was, is, and remains in the service of the big clubs. No surprise here, and one cannot imagine it being any other way – but Platini spoke too loudly and too soon about a revolution, when in fact we’ve seen barely a slight rotation.
Fair Enough?
Thus much of the Champions League. The area of Financial Fair Play, though, remains a lot murkier. The main reason for that is that the crux of the reforms haven’t even taken root yet: the ‘break-even’ requirement will not be tracked until the conclusion of the financial year ending in 2012, and the most serious aspects of the rules won’t come into play until 2013-14. Still, Platini has stated that the looming spectre of accountability – coupled with the fact that transfer amortisation rules mean that signings made now will still have ledger-book impact years down the road – has encouraged clubs to very quickly move to get their houses in order.
But has it really? Probably not. Platini has been at pains to talk tough regarding mega-clubs’ expenditure, warning them that they will face the music if they fail to reign in their spending, and even threatening, somewhat vaguely, that “football will go on without” those who fail to comply.
Yet it most likely wouldn’t. Assuming Platini pushes the main red button at his disposal – exclusion from European competition – the results can be disastrous. A Champions League without, say, the Spanish champions is not a Champions League at all.
In any case, the financial rewards of European football are, in the grand scale of things, actually somewhat overstated: for the vast majority of major clubs, a combination of regular matchday income and domestic league television rights dwarf the money brought in by UEFA. That’s not to say it isn’t important – it clearly is, hence the almost neurotic obsession with the ‘top four’ (which seems to be more dear to some clubs than the league title) – but it’s not the matter of life and death that Platini’s attitude would suggest it is. (The only way it would truly spell the end of the world for the Chelseas and Real Madrids of the world is if the domestic league was replaced by a UEFA superleague setup – something very unlikely to happen under Platini’s reign. Strangely enough this is one topic on which the president has not bloviated too much, but those close to him have called it a “non-starter”.)
On the subject of domestic leagues, again we will begin to see the disparity between UEFA’s concern for its own competitions and what goes on a level below. Don’t forget: the scary part of the new fair play rules – the UEFA Club Monitoring setup – applies only to clubs entering European competition.
Teams that don’t make it to the Europa League or above are subject only to UEFA’s club licensing rules, which are in general far, far less stringent. One is again left at the same conclusion as with the Champions League reforms: big talk, middling results, and rules affecting just a small minority of clubs while potentially causing unexpected consequences for others yet again show themselves as hallmarks of the Platini administration.
Despite the above, one must be careful not to denigrate the financial fair play rules too much. To institute reforms of even these modest measures, to the acceptance of all stakeholders, is actually a mighty feat for Platini and his team.
Yet once again we see that the man’s reach more than exceeds his grasp, and his words. What are in fact some fairly technocratic rulings with uncertain punishments and plenty of scope for future revision have been sold as something truly revolutionary. They are not: the haves will continue to be the haves and the best the have-nots can hope for is to see the gap reduced for a tiny few of their number.
New Adventures
With FFP still to bear fruit, then, Platini is already mounted and riding off for his next challenge. The next four years, apparently, are to be about international football. Of course he’s already weighed in on the 2022 World Cup – which, for the Frenchman, should be for the Gulf, and in winter – but in the meantime there’s the small matter of the international calendar to fix.
How that is done, and what role Platini has in it, will not be predictable until the FIFA presidency matter is settled. Overall, though, he’s made it a mission to “raise the status” of international football – just in time for Euro 2012.
But there is every sign that in fact he’ll be distracted by matters closer to home. Just as his first term came down to money, so will the second. This time it’s less about financial fair play and more about broadcasting.
For months, rumblings around Nyon have indicated that Platini is considering another serious reform: this time on the collective sale of broadcasting rights not just by association but in fact by UEFA in general.
This, more than any other change to the game’s governance, absolutely would make a real and tangible difference to spending patterns and wealth inequality in football. Yet it would also spark a revolt the likes of which European football has arguably never seen, and mutterings about a breakaway would fast turn into shouts.
If the past is anything to go by then there is a real danger that Platini will again overplay his hand early, and that rhetoric won’t live up to reality. And this time, with the stakes being so much higher, such recklessness could come with serious costs for European football.
It is plainly evident that Platini’s desire for change, and to halt the seemingly endless procession of new columns of zeroes in red ink on accounts across Europe, comes from a good place. Yet his passionate approach fizzles out early, to be replaced by moderate, conciliatory implementations that fix little and create new worries elsewhere.
In tone he’s an idealist; in substance he’s yet to prove that he can provide anything of truly lasting value. This needs to change. Either he needs to adjust his goals or improve his results, otherwise Platini’s hopes of returning European football to sanity will disappear as quickly as will his FIFA aspirations in 2015.
See original here:
Michel Platini Needs To Get Real, Lest He Waste Another Four Years Of Opportunity