Michel Platini, the UEFA president has been making the right noises since the time he won the elections. He may not be the most approved or most revered UEFA president but at least he gives an impression of knowing what he is doing. To replace Lennart Johansson would have been tough, but there is no denial that Michel Platini has done a very decent job till now. His plans never was evenly accepted but he seems to think as a footballer while initiating new plans. Earlier I have written a post of Platini's idea to Introduce a Spending cap, I may not have been in complete favour of the idea, but Platini at least decided to address it. He has always been considered as the greatest talent produced by France, but he is also known for his straight talks. Just before the EURO 2000, Platini said the famous statement comparing Zidane and Maradona - "Zidane does some extraordinary things, it's true. But you have to put everything in context. What Zidane does with a ball, Maradona could do with an orange". I do agree with him for what he said, but that blatantly straight forward.Michel Platini's Experiments make Champions League more Interesting
There was a huge hue and cry among football faithfuls when Platini announced to do away with seeding in Champions League qualifying stage. I have to admit that even I was not in favour of it. And my doubts were made firm when I saw Celtic was thrown out after getting paired with Arsenal. Panathinaikos was another causality. As we feared there were some really incompetent teams. Debrecen failed to register a point in their group stage but Unirea Urziceni finished third in their group ahead of Rangers. So it was kind of even, but there was no denial that all these clubs celebrated their participation in the Champions League. Their fans in particular enjoyed every minute of their participation. With these moves Platini took the Champions league towards the smaller nations in Europe. Participating in Champions league will be a huge financial boost for these clubs and should definitely help making their league more competitive.
But what made me saw happy was the decision to spread the knock-out round across a month. Here in India, the most watched football league is the English Premier League. Its the same in most of the Asian countries. Every Year we used to miss the Knock-out stage actions of teams like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. The channels whether ESPN-Star or Ten Sports always preferred to show English club's matches. The only chance to catch your favorite team in action was to hope that they get drawn against an English team. But that is the last thing we want at such early stages in the League. With the entire Knock-out stage being spread out now I can watch FC Barcelona - Stuttgart match , both the legs live. Now that's a very welcoming change. This change would be a huge hit among TV Networks. They can telecast more matches live now and earn more revenues from advertisement.
There could be more reforms coming out from Platini in the future. The two most contagious could be the decision to restrict the number of teams participating in Champions league from a single nation to three from present four. Another one would be the 6+5 rule which even Sepp Blatter supports. That one rule is not going to bother Barca fans a bit, we have that covered with an exceptional academy.