They worked hand in hand, but Michel Platini obviously didn’t get only good memories from it. This Thursday, in an interview with the Guardian, the former president of UEFA said all the bad things he thought of Gianni Infantino, current boss of Fifa and former secretary general of the European body, believing in particular that he had “turned autocrat since the pandemic”.
“He was a good number 2, but not a good number 1. He worked very well at UEFA but he has a problem: he likes the rich and the powerful, those who have money,” declared the three-time Golden Ball winner, now retired from the world of football. It’s in his nature. He was like that as number 2, but at the time he wasn’t the boss. »
“I was destined to become president of Fifa”
The two men worked together at UEFA for six years, between 2009 and 2015, before their respective ambitions separated them. They were notably in competition for the post of president of Fifa when Sepp Blatter left in 2015, before Michel Platini was excluded from the race because of a transfer of 1.8 million euros which interested Swiss justice. He was ultimately acquitted in this case in 2025.
The former number 10 of the France team still hasn’t digested it. “I was destined to become president of Fifa,” he said. All this happened because they didn’t want it. This suspension was a grave injustice and, ultimately, it was political. A group of people decided to kill me. »
Believing that Fifa now cares more about politics than football, Michel Platini blames its president Gianni Infantino. “There is less democracy than during the Blatter era,” he judged. You can say what you want about Blatter, but his main problem was that he wanted to stay at FIFA for life. He was a good person for football.”
