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Michel Platini used to light up a cigarette at half-time. When Juventus’ patron, the elegantissimo Gianni Agnelli, popped his head through the dressing room door and saw him smoking, naturally he challenged the Frenchman on it. Platini gestured his smouldering nail in the direction of Massimo Bonini, the midfielder who had to cover for him on the pitch. “Avvocato,” Platini said. “The important thing is Bonini doesn’t smoke. He’s the one who has to run. I’m Platini.” Surprisingly, Agnelli didn’t fume. He was always charmed by Platini’s class and indulged him, reluctantly accepting his desire to retire at 32. “I bought him for the cost of a slice of bread,” Agnelli liked to say, “and he spread foie gras on it.”
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In 1984, Juventus won the Cup Winners’ Cup against Porto and became champions of Italy for a 21st time. Platini contrived to score 20 league goals even as a No 10. He was in the midst of winning Italy’s top-scorer crown and the Ballon d’Or three years in a row. But statistics never interested Platini. “They do harm,” he recently said. “They make the relationship between the game and the players more individualistic. They count passes, assists, dribbles. Statistics are used by people who don’t understand football.” When Platini read the game, it was a line of poetry, not a set of year-end accounts. But the two coincided at Euro 84.
Platini’s nine goals in five games remains a tournament record. He scored back-to-back hat-tricks against Belgium and Yugoslavia (in 18 minutes), goals from outside the box, headers, dipping free kicks. Only one of them was a penalty and, anyway, Platini preferred to weigh his goals rather than count them. Take, for instance, his winner in stoppage time of extra time in the semi-final against Portugal at the Stade Velodrome in Marseille. “It was like stroking Aladdin’s lamp,” the French singer Mathias Malzieu said. “I’d turn on the television and the genie Platini appeared.”
Forty years later, the Euros is waiting for a Platini to take the tournament by the scruff of the neck.
Lionel Messi scored in every knockout stage of the World Cup in Qatar. Will a big name step up in the final fortnight of this German summer? Cristiano Ronaldo is without a goal in seven games at a major tournament. His one meaningful moment so far, apart from posing for selfies with pitch invaders, was the selfless assist he laid on for Bruno Fernandes against Turkey. Kylian Mbappe and (the exiting) Robert Lewandowski got off the mark in France and Poland’s final group game but only from the penalty spot. Harry Kane looks lost in Germany, which is strange for someone who finished his first year at Bayern Munich as top scorer for his club. Luka Modric started every four days for Croatia when, optimally, he can’t anymore. His Real Madrid team-mate Jude Bellingham hasn’t been able to produce more box-crashing moments like the header he powered in against Serbia in England’s opener.
Some of these players are visibly not 100 per cent and are playing through pain. Mbappe came back earlier than expected after breaking his nose against Poland. Lewandowski didn’t arrive fit in Germany. He missed half of the group stage. There is a mix of players who seem cooked after a long European season and underdone after a year in the Saudi Pro League. On the eve of the Euros, the global players union FIFPRO brought a legal claim against FIFA about the international match calendar on behalf of the English and French unions. There is too much football to expect top players to be at their best in every game.
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But wear and tear doesn’t mitigate for everything. Hosts Germany have been one of the best teams at the Euros, along with Spain and Austria, and yet the players Julian Nagelsmann called up to his squad clocked up more total minutes for their clubs this season than any other nation. Dortmund players went all the way to the Champions League final. Leverkusen participated in the Europa League and DFB-Pokal finals.
If the stars are hidden behind cloud cover, it is also tactical. Opponents have levelled up. They’re better prepared and more flexible. Four of the five Italian coaches at the Euros qualified their national teams for the round of 16. Willy Sagnol and Sylvinho have enhanced their reputations with Georgia and Albania.
Then there is the Guardiola effect and the Deschamps paradigm. One has inspired pale imitations: high ball possession, deep defences, no space in behind. It’s one of the reasons why so many goals from distance have been scored. The other has popularised conservative, often talent-stifling tournament ball. Pre-tournament favourites England and France look like fantasy football teams on paper, particularly in attack. But Deschamps and Gareth Southgate resemble careful Ferrari owners. They don’t want to nick the paintwork and seem to get more joy out of parking than opening up the engine on the autobahn. England’s squad, in particular, is unbalanced and lacking the elite structure Phil Foden, Bellingham, Kane and Bukayo Saka are used to at their clubs.
Having said all of that, the very best players overcome these flawed setups. As the great Italian columnist Vladimiro Caminiti wrote of Platini: “He expresses a total indifference to roles and constrictions. His way of playing evades and escapes all compulsory tactical schemes. Platini is above the team. He goes wide when he should push up. He comes short when he should run in behind. He is a playmaker, not a striker, but nobody has his instinct for scoring goals.”
This was true of Diego Maradona in 1986 and Roberto Baggio in 1994, players who wrested tournaments away from their coaches and took them over themselves. Historically, however, it rarely seems to happen at the Euros. Platini remains an exception, approximated only, perhaps, by Marco van Basten in 1988, whose hat-trick against England and volley in the final against the Soviet Union were some of the finest moments the tournament has ever known. Since then, goalkeepers like Peter Schmeichel (1992) and Gigio Donnarumma (2021) have been named player of the tournament. Theo Zagorakis collected the same accolade and finished fifth in the Ballon d’Or classification after Greece shocked the continent in 2004. Jorginho was third on the list after winning the Champions League and the Euros in the same Covid-hit year in 2021.
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The Euros tends to be defined by who you least expect. When Portugal won the tournament for the first time in 2016, it was Eder, a player on loan from Swansea to Lille, who scored the winning goal in the final against the hosts France — not Ronaldo. It raises the question: does this summer’s Euros need the stars to come out to be considered a good tournament? What if it’s about stars in the making, such as Jamal Musiala, Nico Williams and Lamine Yamal; the players to whom the baton is definitively passed after already impressing with their clubs?
Overall, stargazers have been forced to squint this past fortnight. Maybe Euro 2024 needs to be more Platini.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
