Platini, Porterfield and Associates

Porterfield has coached in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Armenia, he will be sorely missed

Platini in his playing days,will his cavalier approach be welcomed at UEFA?


You would have noticed that I ignored totally the preview of the Champions League matches,why? The match-ups of AC Milan V Celtic, Man UTD V Roma, Valencia V Chelsea, Milan V Benfica. Well in the last two seasons these teams have met many times and who could forget the Barcelona V Chelsea three seasons in a row of being paired together?

So this begs the question where am i getting at? Should we be spared this ferris wheel? Recently Michel Platini was elected as president of the UEFA and his manifesto was to reduce the four team "exclusive rights" for Champions League football for England, Germany, Italy and Spain.

I thought that maybe Platini was changing things for the sake of changing, but his manifesto is actually aimed mostly at Eastern Europe who have been left behind.He wanted a more open Champions League with more clubs from other countries eating that big pie, the people who are against it are obviously from England, Germany, France and other western powers who feel that this will be bad for the game.

But we will not see the same teams over and over again, but the arguement here is that this will reduce the game and the philosophy of "we want quality not quantity", but here is something interesting, are we getting that quality now?

I spoke to a friend once and he said "Who would want to see teams from Bulgaria, Romania or other of these Eastern European Countries get whipped in the Champions League".


There is a flip side to this, how are these teams and leagues going to improve if they are supressed by the powers that be? It is a chicken and egg situation, I think the former French playmaker Platini is on to something.

Now we see clubs like Steau, Leveski, also teams from Ukraine and Russia slowly making their way through, but this is through the current system, imagine if there was an automatic qualification for some teams from Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, etc surely this can be good for the game?

Sure times have changed and the map and terrain of Europe is bigger which actually supports Platini's vision of a more open Champions League.

This can only be good for football, because when did Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria, (granted some of these teams mentioned are not from eastern Europe, but you get my point i hope) etc last qualify for a World Cup?



When is the last time we heard some great footballer coming out of Eastern Europe? No not Shevchenko, but Gheorge Hagi who was known as the "Maradona of the Carpathaians" (the mountains in the region of Romania) or Hristo Stoitchkov. They both played for Barcelona and Hagi even played for Real Madrid.

Going by Platini's manifesto the national teams of these countries (Eastern Europe and other minor European countries) would also improve, their players are also put on showcase and these clubs would benefit when the bigger clubs like AC Milan or Barcelona would want to buy them as their value would be higher once they are put on the Champions league showcase.

The fact that it is called Champions League is an oxymoron, many of these teams are not Champions and if you looked at it another way the UEFA cup is tougher with many teams being lumped there. UEFA though have made the UEFA cup into a massive loser's cup and why take away the European Cup Winners Cup?

This was another disaster by UEFA, this gave the chance for smaller clubs who won the national cup competition a better chance of wininng, teams like Dynamo Tbilisi from Georgia won this competition before and it gave hope to these teams. Bring this cup back and lumping the losers of the Champions League into the UEFA Cup makes the UEFA Cup look like a mutant the UEFA Cup might as well be called the Obesity Cup.


I remember when the Champions League (actually it should have then be called the Champions Cup, does this make sense?) was simply called the European Cup and it was a knockout system, when teams would anxiously wait for the draw and suddenly the western teams would find themselves with exotic draws with clubs from Tbilisi, Sofia, Istanbul, Bucharest,etc

It still can happen, that same friend who said, "who would want to watch these low level European teams" talked about a recent European Championship qualifier between Armenia and Portugal played in Armenia's Republican Stadium, "You should have seen Armenia play, fantastic they had some skillful ball players." Names like Samvel Melkonyan, Robert Arzumanyan, Sargis Hovsepyan or Levon Pachajyan might not ring a bell but to Portugal they will remember that day as they lost two points in that surprise 1-1 draw.

On that day if you were lucky you would have got to see a giant called Ian Porterfield a man who scored that goal against the Mighty Leeds United in the 1973 FA cup final when he scored for Sunderland, he was the coach of Armenia.

His Coaching career was colourful coaching the national teams of Zambia (rebuilding them after the air crash) Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and of course Armenia. Not many people knew at that time but on that day August 11 2007 the match between Armenia and Portugal, Porterfield was fighting another battle with colon cancer and he eventually passed away on September 11 2007.

If Platini wanted an ally or the folks at UEFA wanted to know about football in far flung places and were not looked upon as a "footballing city" they might have had some gold nuggets from a man who lived in a generation when football went through a tremendous transition between four decades, but my bet is Poterfield would have laughed and said something like this; "Lads it is a game and it should be played by everyone." Rest in peace Poterfield.