Legends Revisited: Michel Platini - France's Greatest Player?

In the first of (hopefully) a new series, I will attempt to take a retrospective view of some footballing greats, highlighting their achievements, measure their influence and identify their legacy to the game. And along the way, try to introduce them to a new audience.

With football's popularity rising exponentially Stateside and with new African, Asian and Australian devotees it would be my honour to share some of European and South American football's rich history with you.

There's not a lot that modern followers of Football will know about the Frenchman. The first mainstream exposure he got in twenty years was during the 2006 World Cup when he made a CGI cameo in Adidas' delightful Jose +10 advert.

Don’t remember? Well even then, picked by a small child to rival Franz Beckenbauer, you were probably one of many people just went 'who!?' and let it slip, rather than immediately write-up an article on B/R, outraged about Jose's managerial naivety.

Platini then forced his way into everybody’s long-term consciousness when he won the UEFA presidency, probably on the back of his publicity in Jose's advert. Since then he has been almost constantly annoying everybody by employing a method of arguing some good policies very poorly.

It's not surprising then that most of us don't know and probably don't care about Platini's playing days, but as I hope to demonstrate, that's a real shame.

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