Former UEFA President Michel Platini says Andrea Agnelli only cares about the money and slams ‘ridiculous’ Aleksander Ceferin.
“My relationship with Ceferin does not exist. He is one of those politicians who never played football and are living their moment of glory,” Platini told Tuttosport.
“If former footballers like me stay close to people like him, they don’t exist anymore. I think he managed the Super League crisis the wrong way. Seeing the top club leave to create their own competition is a recurrent risk that UEFA must face.
“So it’s better to prevent rather than treat the clubs’ directors as ‘cowards’ or ‘snakes’ as Ceferin did, he was ridiculous,” the former Juventus striker added.
“I had to face the same problem at the beginning of my UEFA Presidency. I met the Presidents to convince them our competitions were better. We discussed about football’s good, not just the business of TV deals.
“Why did the Super League collapse so easily? Because its leaders adopted bad communication, the media and the fans were against it, especially in England, fans have been great as usual. The same is true of the coaches, Pep Guardiola was brilliant.”
Juventus, Real Madrid and Barcelona insist the Super League is a good idea and have recently released a joint statement to discuss the future of football with UEFA.
“I am not surprised by Agnelli’s behaviour,” said Platini.
“He’s always been oriented to valorize Juventus, especially financially. But you can’t think about money only. Otherwise, you’ll need advertisements even in the net of the goals and on journalists in the press box.
“Gianni Agnelli used to say football belongs to fans and the media. When I added: ‘it belongs to footballers too,’ he replied: ‘That’s what you think.’ But he deeply loved footballers.”