Platini may make announcement on future next week

March 20 – UEFA President Michel Platini (pictured) could announce next week whether he intends to bid for another four-year term it has been reported.

A report in today’s edition of L’Equipe claimed that the 54-year-old Frenchman, elected for the first time in 2007, would announce his intention to stand again for president at UEFA’s Congress in Tel Aviv on March 23-25.

It is claimed that Platini is still ”not totally decided” on his future plans, but it is thought that if he was to make any announcement concerning his future it would “logically be done in front of the Congress on March 25”.

In January Platini had announced that he would make public whether he plans to seek re-election again next year before this year’s World Cup in South Africa.

Platini defeated Sweden’s Lennart Johansson, who held the post for the previous 16 years, by 27 votes to 23, the election in Düsseldorf in June 2007.

He was behind the controversial decision to award the 2012 European Championships to Poland the Ukraine in an attempt to develop the sport in Eastern Europe.

But Platini has courted controversy with his fierce criticism of the English Premier League and, in particular, how several clubs operate financially and has threatened to ban teams that are heavily in debt.

The former France midfield star, widely regarded as his country’s greatest ever player and who scored 41 goals in 72 appearances, has also successfully lobbied against the introduction of video technology, claiming that the only way to improve refereeing was to increase the number of officials.