Michel Platini

Michel Platini was the French playmaker who won the Ballon d'Or three years running, from 1983 to 1985. His start was anything but smooth. The son of a former professional and long-time Nancy director, he had a trial at Metz fall apart when he fainted during a breathing test and a doctor's verdict on his lungs and heart ended his hopes there. Nancy took him into their reserves in 1972 instead, and the teenager with the supposedly weak heart ended up being called Le Roi, the King. He played behind the strikers, setting the rhythm and creating chances for others, and he is remembered as one of the finest passers the game has seen. He had no special physical gifts, yet he was quick, read the game unusually well and had lovely control and a wide range of passing. The other half of his game was goals. He liked to swap passes with teammates until he arrived where one more touch would finish it, and he scored with either foot or his head even though he was naturally right-footed. At Juventus, from midfield, he was Serie A's top scorer three seasons in a row. Free kicks became his trademark at Nancy, where he practised against his goalkeeper friend Jean-Michel Moutier and a line of dummies standing in for the wall. He liked to shoot directly from around 20 metres, often lifting the ball over the wall, and Alessandro Del Piero and Andrea Pirlo later borrowed from his technique. In a 1978 friendly in Naples he beat Dino Zoff with one free kick that was ruled out because the whistle had not gone, then scored from another minutes later, putting it into the side Zoff had left open while guessing. His peak came at Euro 84 on home soil. As captain he scored nine of France's 14 goals in five games, including two hat-tricks and a winner in the last minute of extra time against Portugal in the semi-final. At Juventus he took Liam Brady's number 10, struggled at first, then won two league titles and the 1985 European Cup, scoring the only goal from a penalty in a final overshadowed by the Heysel disaster. The disputed penalty came after his long ball had found Zbigniew Boniek running in behind. The limits were real. Managers sometimes criticised his stamina and his work rate in defence. Italy showed at the 1978 World Cup that he could be contained, with Marco Tardelli's relentless marking keeping him quiet in a 2–1 defeat. In 1986 he played through groin pain with injections, still scored against Italy and Brazil, then sent his own shoot-out penalty over the bar in a quarter-final France won anyway. For all that, he was never sent off in his whole career.