You don`t know anything about German football. The German league has the 2nd highest rate of foreigners out of all European leagues. Why do you talk so much about the Bundesliga without knowing the basics?

The Bundesliga is certainly not an attractive league for plastic fans like yourself who support a team that plays and reaches the latter stages of the CL every year. Could you at least have a little bit more respect for fans who are not gloryhunters…

I doubt that Bayern would be in the same position in their CL group if Robben and Ribery had been fit. They only played together for 45 minutes against Juventus and looked quite dangerous. Juventus has not played great football either. They managed to beat Haifa twice but that`s about it.
The English teams look worse than last year and that might open up the CL this season a bit.

You know nothing about the Bundesliga. Only the Premier League has more foreign players. Do you make up statistics just for fun?

It was Blatter that supported Real Madrid not Platini

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/jun/11/cristiano-ronaldo-80m-michel-platini-gerry-sutcliffe

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The English owner
you can pretty much argued that from alot of other clubs in the world as well.
No clubs don’t need billionaires. They only need multibillionaires to financially compete with other clubs who are able to be successful with local owners or club membership ownership due to better club design, youth development or more fans.
The fact is other clubs in the world deliberately handycap their own financial success by limiting foreign ownership due to some sense of nationalistic pride. Your statement that clubs need multi-billionaires and England don’t have any multi-billionaires can apply to virtually any other country in the world

Don’t you think some of the non-English clubs (let say Germany) would have been more successful if they did allow foreign ownership. Of course so. But they don’t due to political reasons as they believe that German clubs should stay german.

That’s the whole crux of the argument, not holding back English success.

The fact is Platini believes the English club should be owned by ENglish, Spanish clubs should be owned by Spanish, Italian clubs should be own italians. Therefore any success of those clubs are more representative of success of your own country. If England dominated the UEFA champions league with local money, I doubt Platini would have a problem with that.

I don’t agree with that as I’m not a nationalist but at least I see the argument in those terms rather then some anti-English crusade.

He is hardly known for his consistency.

In regards to “However just because PLatini agrees with it and that phenomenon has been widespread in English club. That doesn’t mean PLatini is somehow prejudice against the English. Hell How could forcing clubs to be own by English be anti-English” that.

It’s simple, English owners don’t have the finance of overseas owners. Look at Mike Ashley, he basically sunk Newcastle. Clubs need multi-billionaires at the helm, just being a billionaire isn’t enough anymore and obviously that cuts a few people out of the market

According to your rationale – don’t you think the world would have wanted the Italians to have beaten the South Koreans in 2002

FIFA loves the illusion of the romanticism of any country on Earth being able to make the actual final – but deep down they know that only the having the big names in the final really brings in the money.

His brief is to look after the health of the game in his confederation and to all the members in the UEFA confederation.
His brief is not to suck up to debt addled ego-tripping owners who are in the game for all the wrong reasons.

But all he will effectively succeed in doing is creating the European Super League.

Just has his French team of 1982 were the “last of the romantics”, so is it with Platini today.

But he has had trouble accepting that the days when clubs like Standard Liege or Red Star Belgrade might challenge for the CL are long over.

People cling to these romantic ideals – but it’s all rubbish – the world is only interested in the best of the best.

They don’t want Honduras making the top four in the World Cup – they only want to see the very best.

It’s the same in the CL.

However Platini, I think he has been rather consistent. Whether you agree with his points of view or not, he was equally disgusted by REal Madrid spending spree as he was with English Club. He punish Italian clubs who poached players with out compensation as much as he done with Chelsea.

Let just say all the issues you mention can be argued purely on football terms and whether that is good for the game. Rather then be reduce to simple this is hurting the French league and this will damage English league.

I don’t particularly agree with the no foreign owner stance. However just because PLatini agrees with it and that phenomenon has been widespread in English club. That doesn’t mean PLatini is somehow prejudice against the English. Hell How could forcing clubs to be own by English be anti-English. I’m certainly against Platini modifying national team rules to prevent people who lived in the country for 5 years to represent that country. However that’s got nothing to do with prejudice. Platini certainly comes from a rather old-school nationalism but I wouldn’t call him anti-English for his plans.

yes, all the points you mention have referred to means for why the EPL has been successfull. However that is pretty much irrelevant to whether those issues are right or not.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/6488300/Michel-Platini-who-would-be-stupid-enough-to-buy-Manchester-United-or-Chelsea.html

So I too think this can only a good thing for EPL, if only if the rich clubs would trust Platini

If I were to judge on that basis then I’d say Italy has more depth than Germany. I unfortunately don’t get to see as much of the Serie A as I’d like, I generally watch it with a group of Italians, in Italian which is a fantastic experience but have been on the road most weekends and living in Germany I see a fair bit of the Bundesliga whether it be live or on Tele.

Italian sides have better quality players in general, what can pass for a Starting XI in the Bundesliga certainly wouldn’t be acceptable in Spain, England or Italy.

Not to mention the bigger clubs in Italy are better than their German counterparts, Bayern are all but out of the CL already and they were meant to be “contesting” this year according to the papers here with Robben on the other flank it was going to be their year.

The French league is heavily depleted of its finest talent (I think Brazil has 95 players in the CL while France with 94 was second) and yet the teams are still comprised mainly of French or African players.

But such a change is a big call for the EPL i’d agree, its built around a different premise and marketed as such. And the likelihood is low due to the EU laws of course, tho i’m sure there’s some way around that. Politics and football being as intertwined as it is.

The success of the Bundesliga is measured on different terms to the EPL, who pride themselves on being the richest league etc. So it’d require a different mentality on what people expect from the Premier league. A pretty seismic shift to make it work, and there’s probably too much money/debt at stake to make the change now.

He has championed some smaller Euro nations with the UCL allocations and other issues.

But absolutely he’s no pro-English chairman. At the same time though, i don’t necessarily think he’s overwhelmingly pro-French either.

I hope he goes further to break down the mega-bucks mentality in ‘English’ football. It may even go some way to opening up the EPL to … god forbid … a reliance on English footballers. Player quotas would do the country’s up and coming players the world of good.