By ROB HUGHES

LONDON - Michel Platini, the outstanding French soccer player of his day, dropped by Jerusalem recently and was received by Israel’s president, Shimon Peres. The two men discussed what role soccer might play toward peace in the Middle East.

The pair had been down this road once before. Three years ago, Mr. Peres and Mr. Platini helped put together a team of Israelis and Palestinians who took on a Spanish team in Seville. This time Mr. Platini visited Jerusalem in his capacity as the head of UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, and he offered Israel the prospect of hosting international tournaments if enough stadiums could be built.

“I was a leader on the field,”

Mr. Platini, 54, said . “Now, I should be a leader for the game. To me, it is a game - with many, many things attached. It has to remain a game, or nobody will save it.” Mr. Platini is trying, for a second time, to transform soccer. He fought in his younger days for the sport to be an accepted profession in France. He transcended the game, and made his mark as a champion of fair play. And he made his fortune in his father’s homeland, with the Italian club Juventus, whose owner, Gianni Agnelli, the head of Fiat, adored Mr. Platini.

But in his second career, the often excruciating transition that professional sports figures face, Mr. Platini is taking on an even more difficult task.

He is trying to unite under a common set of operating principles the 53 members of UEFA: 27 states inside the European Union and 26 outside it, including all of the former Eastern European bloc, and nations that lie outside the geographic borders, like Turkey and Israel. His goal is to level the playing field between rich teams, those with television contracts and billionaire owners, and the small ones who rely mostly on fan support.

He wants to rein in teams like Real Madrid, which spent $433 million this summer to buy the rights to four superstars, and the big name teams from the high-level English Premier League.

Last February, Mr. Platini addressed the full European Parliament for, appropriately enough, the 90 minutes that it takes to play a soccer game.

He spoke about the January trading period, in which star players are transferred for millions of dollars from small market clubs to the dominant teams . One club in England, for example, bid $150 million for the registration of a single player, the Brazilian Ricardo dos Santos Leite, known as Kaka, from A.C. Milan (he ultimately signed with Real Madrid). “Is it morally acceptable to offer such sums of money for a single player?” Mr. Platini asked the lawmakers.

He said he would ensure that soccer operates within European community law provided they amend the law to let him govern the sport. To do that, he said, he needed an Americanstyle system that restricted spending to a percentage of every team’s revenues.

“We are currently looking at the idea of limiting, to a certain degree, a club’s expenditure on staff - salary and transfer fees combined - to an as yet undecided percentage of its direct and indirect sporting revenue,” he said.

Many seemed skeptical about an ex-player arguing the case that European soccer needs what professional sports get in America - some acknowledgment of their special place in society, some freedom to develop their own laws.

However, in September, the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, held a two-day conference on licensing systems for club competitions. This conference, for all sports, supported Mr. Platini’s goal to regulate the spending of big teams within Europe. Perhaps just as surprising was that Mr. Platini’s proposal was backed by the leading clubs.

“I am nothing, just one man,” Mr. Platini said. “But I was elected by the national associations because I promised to make financial fair play in soccer. I don’t want to be above the law, I know that we could lose in the courts if clubs use lawyers to stop us imposing limitations. I asked the politicians to help protect us, if they trust what we are doing.”


“I was a leader on the field. Now I should be a leader for the game. …It has to remain a game, or nobody will save it.” / RICARDO MORAES/ASSOCIATED PRESS