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MICHEL PLATINI EXCLUSIVE: The day the UEFA president went toe-to-toe with his fiercest critic
By Martin Samuel
PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 24 May 2013 | UPDATED: 16:34 EST, 24 May 2013
We want to like Michel Platini. Of course we do. We’re football men, he’s a football man. We loved the beautiful game, he played the beautiful game. Haven’t we been saying for years that there are not enough football people at the top? And then what does he do? He ruins it.
He votes for Qatar, he expands the European Championship to 24 teams. He spreads the competition across an entire continent in 2020.
And he introduces financial fair play, a raft of regulations that plays into the hands of the established club elite, now developing a stranglehold on domestic football in Europe.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...#ixzz2UQO3A9KM
Martin Samuel: I sat with David Gill [chief executive of Manchester United] on a plane recently and we talked about financial fair play. I asked him for one reason, just one reason, why it wouldn’t hand the league title to Manchester United every year, because their financial advantage would be so great. And he couldn’t come up with one, not one actual reason. Can you come up with one reason why Manchester United will not now be so advantaged because of financial fair play?
David Farrelly (UEFA head of communications): The fact that it’s an advantage for Manchester United – but only Manchester United?
Samuel: It would apply to Bayern Munich, it would apply to any of the elite clubs.
Michel Platini: I am not in this way. I am not in this feeling. I am in the feeling to protect the clubs. All of the clubs are having big problems – they are all having big losses. Debts and big losses. It is not a question to make advantage to one or the other. It is to protect the cultural aspect of the football in Europe. I want to protect the club. Because when you have €1.5billion of losses every year, one day you will have big problems like in Rangers, like in Portsmouth, like in many, many clubs. My job was not to say I protect Bayern Munich, or Manchester, I want to protect all the clubs that are in big difficulties, financial difficulties. That is why we organise financial fair play in this way. Then we give to the financial experts to apply the morality of this financial fair play. And we are working for two or three years on how we can work on the finances of the clubs to help the clubs to survive through the big problems that we face today. That is how I feel. It is not the goal to protect Manchester or another club, it is to protect all the football, because football is beautiful. It is about patrimony of the European football and I have to protect all the clubs. That is my idea.
Samuel: I don’t think for one second that your idea was to protect Manchester United or to protect Barcelona, my point is that the way that the financial fair play rules have been set up, that is what is going to happen. I was asking how can you prevent that happening?
Platini: To not to spend more money than we receive. That is the only thing, it is a small sentence, but is a very, very beautiful sentence. And what’s happened with Rangers, Rangers have everything, they have the fans, they have the public, but they are pshht and bankrupt. And I have to protect them. I think with this financial fair play we will not have clubs that will be getting in difficulty. But it is up to me to find the way, I want to improve them. And when you begin by a white book, you can have the feelings, the mentality and the moralities – but you have to put them, the regulations, on the book. We take three years, four years because we make a deal with all the clubs that we will wait four years to put this. Manchester City, Chelsea, they make big efforts, perhaps it’s not enough to be inside financial fair play but it is a big effort because they know that we will take a decision next year.
Samuel: When it started, I would imagine one of the people that you were looking to control would be Roman Abramovich [owner] at Chelsea, because of the idea he is financial doping. Roman Abramovich ended up on your side, on the same side as you. So if he is in favour of your regulations, is that not a clue that the regulations are actually protecting the elite, rather than solving the problem overall?
Platini: No, because I am not a big financial expert about the financial fair play. I have a mentality and morality. It is the first time that we have unanimity about creating financial fair play. Unanimity by the clubs, unanimity by the owners of the clubs, unanimity by the unions of the players, unanimity by the politicians, the parliaments, the European commission, unanimity by national associations, everybody wanted that I put regulation. I spoke with some people like Silvio Berlusconi [owner, AC Milan], like Massimo Moratti [owner, Inter Milan], that were putting €100 million in every year, they said, ‘Michel, put regulation because we can’t pay more, it is finished.’ OK, so this time we have unanimity. It was not easy to begin where we go. We ask the financial experts of Europe, we have a disciplinary matter, we are rehearsing and in four years we make a deal with all the clubs and it will take four years to do that. Now coming back to the question, I think that Abramovich is like Mr Moratti, is like Mr Berlusconi, he says, ‘OK stop. I don’t want to play this bad game with those other clubs paying more, more, more and lose a lot of money.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...#ixzz2UQOJic2Z
By Martin Samuel
PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 24 May 2013 | UPDATED: 16:34 EST, 24 May 2013
We want to like Michel Platini. Of course we do. We’re football men, he’s a football man. We loved the beautiful game, he played the beautiful game. Haven’t we been saying for years that there are not enough football people at the top? And then what does he do? He ruins it.
He votes for Qatar, he expands the European Championship to 24 teams. He spreads the competition across an entire continent in 2020.
And he introduces financial fair play, a raft of regulations that plays into the hands of the established club elite, now developing a stranglehold on domestic football in Europe.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...#ixzz2UQO3A9KM
Martin Samuel: I sat with David Gill [chief executive of Manchester United] on a plane recently and we talked about financial fair play. I asked him for one reason, just one reason, why it wouldn’t hand the league title to Manchester United every year, because their financial advantage would be so great. And he couldn’t come up with one, not one actual reason. Can you come up with one reason why Manchester United will not now be so advantaged because of financial fair play?
David Farrelly (UEFA head of communications): The fact that it’s an advantage for Manchester United – but only Manchester United?
Samuel: It would apply to Bayern Munich, it would apply to any of the elite clubs.
Michel Platini: I am not in this way. I am not in this feeling. I am in the feeling to protect the clubs. All of the clubs are having big problems – they are all having big losses. Debts and big losses. It is not a question to make advantage to one or the other. It is to protect the cultural aspect of the football in Europe. I want to protect the club. Because when you have €1.5billion of losses every year, one day you will have big problems like in Rangers, like in Portsmouth, like in many, many clubs. My job was not to say I protect Bayern Munich, or Manchester, I want to protect all the clubs that are in big difficulties, financial difficulties. That is why we organise financial fair play in this way. Then we give to the financial experts to apply the morality of this financial fair play. And we are working for two or three years on how we can work on the finances of the clubs to help the clubs to survive through the big problems that we face today. That is how I feel. It is not the goal to protect Manchester or another club, it is to protect all the football, because football is beautiful. It is about patrimony of the European football and I have to protect all the clubs. That is my idea.
Samuel: I don’t think for one second that your idea was to protect Manchester United or to protect Barcelona, my point is that the way that the financial fair play rules have been set up, that is what is going to happen. I was asking how can you prevent that happening?
Platini: To not to spend more money than we receive. That is the only thing, it is a small sentence, but is a very, very beautiful sentence. And what’s happened with Rangers, Rangers have everything, they have the fans, they have the public, but they are pshht and bankrupt. And I have to protect them. I think with this financial fair play we will not have clubs that will be getting in difficulty. But it is up to me to find the way, I want to improve them. And when you begin by a white book, you can have the feelings, the mentality and the moralities – but you have to put them, the regulations, on the book. We take three years, four years because we make a deal with all the clubs that we will wait four years to put this. Manchester City, Chelsea, they make big efforts, perhaps it’s not enough to be inside financial fair play but it is a big effort because they know that we will take a decision next year.
Samuel: When it started, I would imagine one of the people that you were looking to control would be Roman Abramovich [owner] at Chelsea, because of the idea he is financial doping. Roman Abramovich ended up on your side, on the same side as you. So if he is in favour of your regulations, is that not a clue that the regulations are actually protecting the elite, rather than solving the problem overall?
Platini: No, because I am not a big financial expert about the financial fair play. I have a mentality and morality. It is the first time that we have unanimity about creating financial fair play. Unanimity by the clubs, unanimity by the owners of the clubs, unanimity by the unions of the players, unanimity by the politicians, the parliaments, the European commission, unanimity by national associations, everybody wanted that I put regulation. I spoke with some people like Silvio Berlusconi [owner, AC Milan], like Massimo Moratti [owner, Inter Milan], that were putting €100 million in every year, they said, ‘Michel, put regulation because we can’t pay more, it is finished.’ OK, so this time we have unanimity. It was not easy to begin where we go. We ask the financial experts of Europe, we have a disciplinary matter, we are rehearsing and in four years we make a deal with all the clubs and it will take four years to do that. Now coming back to the question, I think that Abramovich is like Mr Moratti, is like Mr Berlusconi, he says, ‘OK stop. I don’t want to play this bad game with those other clubs paying more, more, more and lose a lot of money.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...#ixzz2UQOJic2Z