January 31 – Free to work in football again now that his ban from the game is over, Michel Platini says he is a happy man despite never realising his ambition of running FIFA and instead seeing his reputation shattered.
Inaugurating a sport, literature and film festival in his homeland this week that included a film about his illustrious career, Platini opened up on a number of issues – not least his pet subjects Sepp Blatter and VAR – and used the tragic death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant to reflect on his own life.
“I’m still happy, I have an exceptional life,” Platini said. “There have been inconveniences, small worries, but when I see what happened with Mr. Kobe Bryant, it’s nothing much.”
“There are so many misfortunes in life, what happened to me is not very serious at all.”
Platini, who has been widely reported as taking up a consultancy role the players’ union FIFPro (although this has been denied), still insists he did nothing wrong when he was banned for receiving a CHF 2 million payment from FIFA signed off by Blatter as part of a 10-year delayed payment for supposed consulting work.
The payment, made in 2011 when Blatter was seeking re-election as president, was related to work carried out by Platini between 1999 and 2002.
Blatter, too, was banned and the pair have since fallen out spectacularly amid a persistent tit-for-tat verbal spat.
“Today I have no more respect for Blatter because he was not nice to me, “ said Platini, “but I can admit that he was a very good FIFA president.”
Renewing his attack on VAR, Platini told his audience: “You are taking away the emotion and ridiculing referees who no longer have any credibility.”
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