Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Platini

Michel Platini did not have an athlete’s physique either. In 1972 the club Metz doctor told Platini he was suffering from “a weak heart and poor respiratory capacity.” The report was enough for Metz to reject this aspiring player, even though the doctor failed to notice that Platini’s ankles were stiff and easily fractured and that he tended to put on weight due to his passion for pasta. In any case, ten years later, shortly before the World Cup in Spain, this defective reject got his revenge: his team, Saint Étienne, beat Metz 9–2.

Platini was the synthesis of the best of French soccer: he had the aim of Justo Fontaine, who in the ’58 World Cup scored thirteen goals, a record never beaten, along with the speed and smarts of Raymond Kopa. In each match Platini not only put on a magic show of goals, ones that could not possibly be real, he also lit up the crowd with the way he organized the team’s plays. Under his leadership, the French team played a harmonious soccer, fashioned and relished step by step as each play grew organically: precisely the opposite of center to the box, all-out stampede or God have mercy.

In the semifinals of the ’82 World Cup, France lost to Germany in a penalty shootout. That was a duel between Platini and Rummenigge, who was injured but leaped onto the playing field anyway and won the match. Then, in the final, Germany lost to Italy. Neither Platini nor Rummenigge, two players who made soccer history, ever had the pleasure of winning a world championship.