Making the right pass at a crucial moment made Michel Platini one of the world’s greatest footballers, but poor timing cost his place as one of the most powerful men in sport.
The 60-year-old Frenchman, who quit as UEFA president yesterday after failing to overturn a ban from world football, regularly battled back from injury and other blows to star in some of football’s most dramatic moments as a player. Escaping FIFA’s corruption turmoil has been a trick too far.
The time between his work as an adviser to FIFA president Sepp Blatter between 1999 and 2002 and a two million Swiss francs ($2 million, 1.8 million euros) payment he received in 2011 was not great tactics.
FIFA banned him for eight years saying the reason for the payment stretched credibility. This was cut to six years on appeal. The Court of Arbitration cut it to four years yesterday, but said it also doubted the “legitimacy” of the payment.
Platini angrily said the decision was intended to stop him from standing as FIFA president in four years. But now his time in world football politics is over.
The grandson of Italian migrants, Platini was born and brought up in the small steel town of Joeuf in eastern France. His father Aldo was a local maths teacher and football coach.  
Platini won the French Cup with Nancy, a league title with St Etienne and was lured to Juventus in 1982. In Turin, the genius playmaker won two Serie A titles and a European Cup.
The passes were always inch-perfect and for a time, Platini was one of the greatest players in the world. He won the 1984 European Championship with France and the Ballon d’Or in 1983, 1984 and 1985.  
After his retirement, he was co-chairman of the 1998 World Cup organising committee in France and was an influential backer of Sepp Blatter’s bid to take over the FIFA presidency in 1998.
Platini became vice-president of the French Football Federation in 2001 and scored his first major political victory when he took charge of UEFA in 2007 — shoving out long-time leader Lennart Johansson in the first round of voting.
For years he seemed Blatter’s anointed successor. Chung Mong-Joon, the South Korean tycoon and former FIFA vice-president, said there was a “father and son” relationship between the two.
The distance between them grew as scandal engulfed FIFA under Blatter’s imperial rule.
But for three years from 1999 Platini was an adviser to world football’s leader. Their version is that they reached an oral agreement on the salary of one million Swiss francs a year, which was not all paid at the time.
FIFA knew nothing about the deal however, and Swiss prosecutors deemed a two million Swiss franc transfer in 2011 to be a “disloyal payment”.
He also courted controversy over his refusal to hand back a watch worth more than $25,000 that was gifted to him by the Brazilian Football Confederation at last year’s World Cup.
“I’m a well-educated person. I don’t return gifts,” said Platini after FIFA called for all watches given to executive members to be handed back over a breach of ethics rules. Again the timing was doubtful.
In football, as in many sports, timing is important. It holds true in sports administration too.