Perfect, twice: France winning the European Championships, 40 years on
It's now been four decades since arguably the finest ever performance by a European footballer at a major tournament. Pity he turned out to be such a wrong 'un.
The comparisons with the worlds of music and light entertainment are difficult to avoid. You have to separate the art from the artist. This will be truer for some people than others, and about as much you can realistically expect from most on the subject is a complete lack of consistency. The truth of the matter is that bad people can produce great art, and forty years ago this summer Michel Platini produced some of the greatest of all.
The French team of 1984 had undergone mild upgrades since losing their World Cup semi-final to West Germany in Seville two years earlier. Monaco’s Jean-Luc Ettori had been replaced as goalkeeper by Joël Bats of Auxerre. Bruno Bellone, also of Monaco, had been a bit-part player in Spain two years earlier but had since graduated to become a central part of their attack.
Elsewhere, Le Carré Magique diamond midfield of four was completed by Luis Fernandez of PSG, who’d just missed out on a place in the 1982 World Cup squad but made his debut for Les Bleus in November of that year and quickly became a central cog in manager Michel Hidalgo’s midfield engine. He’d sit at the base of the diamond, with Platini at its head, and the Bordeaux duo of Jean Tigana to his left and Alain Giresse to his right.
Hidalgo hadn’t settled on this formation until quite late in the day. The first time that he used all four together in a game had only come during a 2-0 friendly win against England on the 29th February 1984. But such was the strength of the midfield in that performance that it was quickly evident that this was the best formation upon which he could settle. As the host nation and unbeaten in their previous six friendly matches, going back to September the previous year, they started it as favourites.
But enthusiasm wasn’t particularly high for this tournament. The previous one, held four years earlier in Italy, had been a bit of a damp squib, largely played in empty stadiums, pock-marked with hooliganism, and featuring an array of slightly listless matches being played. This was all thanks to a poor format which resulted in an unnecessary high number of dead rubbers on account of UEFA’s inexplicable decision to not bother with semi-finals, which meant that the two group winners in a tournament of eight went straight through to the final while the two runners-up would play the third-fourth place play-off.
There were causes for optimism. Lessons had been learned from 1980, and this time there would be semi-finals and no third-fourth place play-off. The hosts were a strong team. Denmark looked good in knocking out England in qualification, a state of affairs which likely invoked a huge sigh of relief among the tournament organisers. But if the English weren’t going to be missed in 1984, world champions Italy and the Netherlands, both of whom failed to qualify, likely were. A couple of the seriously big guns were missing. The Dutch had been knocked out after Spain had eyebrow-raisingly beaten Malta 12-1 in their final qualifying match when needing an eleven goal win to get through.
Indeed, the entire tournament almost practically passed the entire UK by, especially after ITV reneged on a previous agreement to show some group matches live. As things turned out, only two matches—the final and the match in Group B between France and Spain—were the only ones shown live in Britain.
France started creakily in the opening match of the tournament with a 1-0 win at Parc de Princes against a spritely Denmark who were severely knocked off balance shortly before half-time, when former European Footballer of the Year Allan Simonsen broke his shin in a sickening injury. The Danes held on until Platini broke the deadlock twelve minutes from time. The following day, Belgium beat Yugoslavia 2-0 in Lens in the group’s other match.
By the time France reconvened for their second group match against Belgium at La Beaujoire in Nantes, they were little the wiser about the other teams in their tournament. Both of the opening games in the tournament’s other group, West Germany vs Portugal and Romania vs Spain, had ended in rather drab draws. The tournament needed setting alight, and over the course of four days Platini provided the matches.
To score a hat-trick in a tournament finals match is an exceptional achievement. To do so twice in the same tournament and in consecutive games is near-unbelievable. To do so with two perfect hat-tricks (left foot, right foot, header) in consecutive matches is such an achievement so singular that it may never be repeated in a tournament finals.
Against both Belgium, as part of a 5-0 win, and Yugoslavia, as part of a 3-2 win, France’s opponents fell to pieces under Platini’s gaze. With seven goals in three games, his team was comfortably through to the semi-finals alongside Denmark, who had coincidentally also won their two remaining group matches 5-0 and 3-2.
It was Group B which handed out the big surprise of the tournament. West Germany had been the favourites to win the group alongside a Spain team which had failed as hosts of the last World Cup, Romania, and a Portugal team making their first appearance in a tournament finals since the 1966 World Cup. After a goalless draw with Portugal in their opening match, two goals from Rudi Voller were enough to edge them to a 2-1 win. But results elsewhere still left them potentially needing something from their final game against Spain.
With both games goalless and ten minutes to go (kick-off times for final group matches had been standardised following The Disgrace of Gijon two years earlier), West Germany looked likely to go through, but then their evening fell apart. With nine minutes to play in the match between Portugal and Romania, Nene gave Portugal the lead. And then in the dying seconds of the match between West Germany and Spain in Paris, Antonio Macedo scored for Spain, sending them and Portugal through to the semi-finals and knocking the second-favourites to win the tournament out. France would play Portugal in Marseille in the first semi-finals, while Spain would play Denmark in the second, to be played in Lyon.
The biggest crowd of the tournament, almost 55,000, packed into Le Velodrome on an increasingly humid Saturday evening for the semi-final. This was expected to be easy pickings for the host nation. Portugal had already caused a significant surprise by getting past West Germany in the group stage. With the two semi-finals being played on Saturday and Sunday nights much of the talk of the build-up concerned who would be playing France between a Spain team much improved on the previous World Cup and an up and coming Denmark team.
By half-time, it felt as though the job had been half-done. It hadn’t been an especially thrilling first half, but a free-kick taken by Jean-François Domergue of Toulouse which, with Platini hovering nearby, seemed to catch everybody off-guard and flew into the goal just past the midway point in the half to give France a nerve-settling lead. The explosion of noise inside Le Velodrome that greeted the goal felt more than a little like a cry of relief.
But the second French goal to kill the game off didn’t follow. France had reckoned without the rearguard action of the Benfica goalkeeper Manuel Bento, who pulled off a string of excellent—if increasingly desperate and at points unlikely looking—saves to keep Portugal in the game. And with sixteen minutes to play France paid the price for their missed opportunities when Fernando Chalana sent over a cross for Rui Jordao to send a looping header over Bats and in to bring Portugal.
There were still some desperate moments for Portugal. At one point Platini broke through and saw his attempt to round Bento foiled only for the ball to break loose for Didier Six, whose shot was also blocked by the goalkeeper, only to loop high up into the air, down onto the top of the crossbar, and eventually over. The match was forced into extra-time.
When the script goes out of the window like this, just about anything can happen. Portugal started the additional thirty minutes strongly, with Joao Pinto crossing from the right and Nene’s header bringing a superb save from Bats. But eight minutes in and with the previous warning apparently unheeded, Portugal did take the lead. There was more than a hint of luck about it. Chalana’s cross from the right was perfect for Jordao, but he completely mis-hit his shot into the ground, whereupon it bounced back up, looped over Bats and into the corner of the goal.
The shock was on, and when Chalana fed Nene through the middle it looked as though Portugal could make the game safe before the first half of extra-time was even done, but Bats was quickly off his line and blocked the shot. Into the second half of extra-time, France poured forward, but when the equalising goal did come with six minutes to play it had a hint of chaos about it. Domergue played the ball into the penalty area and kept running. A shot from Marius Tresor was blocked but fell to Platini, who also went down under a tackle, but this time the ball ran loose and Domergue appeared to his left and drilled the ball into the empty the goal and level the score at 2-2.
The winning goal came in the very last minute, a production of Le Carré Magique. Fernandez picked the ball up inside his own half and fed the ball quickly towards Platini. The pass was blocked by a lunge of a tackle, but Tigana had kept going, picking up the ball and carrying it to the right hand touchline before pulling it back to Platini, six yards from goal. He could have swung wildly at it. He might have been crushed by the defenders and goalkeeper descending upon him. But instead Michel Platini, the coolest cat in town that evening, took a touch to control the ball and lashed it through the four defenders and goalkeeper between him and into the top corner of the goal.
Victoire, after all. As Platini wheeled away from the hillock of defenders around him following his eighth goal in four matches, Le Velodrome exploded again. France had booked their place in the final, by the skin of their teeth. Perhaps they would have won a penalty shootout against Portugal. but their experience in Seville a couple of years earlier indicated that this wasn’t a path that Hidalgo would want to follow. The following day Spain beat Denmark on penalties at Parc de Princes after a 1-1 draw to book the other place in the final.
The final of the 1984 European Championships took place the following Wednesday evening in Paris, and the atmosphere was expectant. Spain may already have knocked out both West Germany and Denmark, but France’s five wins out of five and home advantage gave them a clear edge. Spain were dogged, digging in deep and stopping the French midfield from attacking with the fluidity that they’d been able to play with against Portugal. By half-time things were goalless and Spain had come closest, with a Santillana header from a corner cleared off the line by Patrick Battiston.
But twelve minutes into the second half, France got the stroke of luck they needed. A free-kick just to the left of the edge of the Spain penalty area was always likely to be dangerous, with the array of talent that France had at their disposal, but it looked as though Platini’s shot somewhat weak, low curling shot had been saved by the Spain goalkeeper Luis Arconada, only for the ball to somehow squirm under his body and a foot over the line before his arm popped out to try and shovel it back into play.
Two years earlier, a terrible mistake by the same goalkeeper had gifted Northern Ireland a win in the World Cup finals and sentenced Spain to a second group phase against England and West Germany when he feebly pawed a low cross into the path of Gerry Armstrong to score the only goal of the game. Now in Paris, just two years later, history seemed to be repeating itself.
As per the Portugal match, the opening goal of the season didn’t seem enough to wake France up, but on this occasion the goal also seemed to knock something out of Spain. At exactly the point that you might have expected them to throw caution to the wind to try and get back into the match, they seemed to run out of steam a little and although they enjoyed the majority of possession over the next twenty minutes the nearest to a goal came with a low shot from Alain Giresse to fizz past the Spain goal, although there was still time for the tension to be turned up a notch when Yvon Le Roux, another Monaco player, was sent off after picking up a second yellow card.
Those nerves weren’t finally put to bed until the very last minute. Spain had committed just about everybody forward, and with fifty seconds of stoppage-time played that left significant gaps in the Spain defence, Tigana—whose performance throughout the tournament would likely have won him the Player of the Tournament had it not been for Platini’s goalscoring—threaded the ball between two defenders for Bruno Bellone to chase through and lob it past Arconada to finally put the result beyond Spain.
Over the course of the 90 minutes of the final France had just about edged it, but draw that lens back a little and it’s clear that they were the best team in the tournament, winning five games out of five. Their captain lifted the trophy that evening having scored nine goals in those five games in arguably the most dominant performance by one player in any European Championship or World Cup.
“It was a triumph for attacking football after years of defensive attitudes”, said Hidalgo after the match, and he was tapping into a genuine concern about the direction that football in Europe was taking at the time. At the time of the tournament, no team had scored more than a single goal in any of the previous seven European Cup finals, while the previous Euros had been castigated for the defensive football on display and Italy had only won the previous World Cup when they broke out of the defensive shell after scraping through their group past Cameroon on goals scored after drawing all three of their group matches.
The defensive nature of football had been a hot topic for some years. It was behind the Football League’s decision to adopt three points for a win in 1981 and its subsequent adoption across the world. There was a genuine concern that a fear of losing was turning the game stale. But Hidalgo’s team proved that tournaments could still be won with grace, style and extremely high drama indeed. Le Carré Magique could have been implemented in a different way which smothered opposing attacks, but the players concerned made that practically impossible, so France flooded forward instead and found that opponents had no answer to either Platini’s artistry or the gaps that appeared around him when attempts to shut him down were made.
Two years later in Mexico, France made their third semi-final in a row, but this time they couldn’t go all the way. They particularly struggled in their opening match against Canada, a team playing their first ever World Cup finals match, before a late Alain Giresse goal snatched them a win that their performance had barely deserved. And a draw with the USSR in their second match did leave them at risk of elimination before a comfortable win against Hungary took them through to the knockout stages, where wins against the holders Italy and pre-tournament favourites Brazil before they were beaten 2-0 by West Germany in the semi-finals.
Hidalgo had quit as manager after the 1984 finals, moving upstairs to become technical director, but his fingerprints were still clearly all over the national team in 1986, and arguably have been ever since. For all the successes that followed it—two World Cups, a European Championship and a Nations League isn’t a bad haul for just over 25 years—the 1984 team remains a high watermark for French football, the point at which a country which had never quite taken football as seriously as some other European countries really fulfilled its potential.
Michel Platini never quite hit those heights again. He’d turned 29 in the middle of Euro 84, between the Yugoslavia and Portugal games, and retired from playing in 1987. His post-playing career is a whole other can of worms, of course. A year after his retirement he was back on the pitch, playing for Kuwait against the USSR in an international friendly (with a pot belly which suggested that he was rather enjoying retirement), an appearance which invites questions of its own, considering everything that happened afterwards.
His time as manager of the France national team is notable primarily for getting knocked out of Euro 92 at the first stage, and his career in football administration ended in a ban that only finally ended last year. The less said about that, the better. But for one summer four decades ago, France offered a vision of how football could lift itself out of the defensive mess in which it had found itself by the middle of the 1980s.
It took a while for many to catch up to the idea—the finals of the 1990 and 1994 World Cups would produce no goals from open play and just one from the penalty spot—but in 1984 romanticism, the desire to play the game, won out. That it should have been tainted by the post-playing career of the man most readily associated with it shouldn’t detract from what an achievement it was in the first place.