Greatest French Player , Michel Platini or Zinedine Zidane?

I have watched a few full matches featuring Platini over the past year and discovered that a degree of mythology has built up over the years about his perceived style of play. It is often claimed that he was slow and unfit and did not contribute defensively. He did not possess the kind of instant acceleration that many great players had but he was quite pacy on the ball despite his languid playing style. He also tracked back frequently, putting in some tough tackles and he also had good defensive positioning. At 1:50 he makes a sliding interception

 

In this game against Holland he demonstrates his good defensive positioning at 1:01:40 and again at 1:05:16

 

As an evidence of it, he committed 16 fouls in EC84, nearly twice as many as any other French player.

 

Individual preferences aside, I’d say that being perceived to be imapactful or not depends a lot on circumstance as well, and it’s particularly applicable in case of Zidane’s best tournament performance vis-a-vis Platini’s Euro 84.

Zidane was at the top of his game prior to WC 2002. He had scored twice and assisted once in the key SF and F games of the UCL winning run with Real Madrid that summer. Without his injury, he could have gone on to have a special World Cup tournament performance that year both from a gameplay and statistical perspective. Something more comparable to the peak performances of other greats, considering most greats have only that one strong tournament performance from their peak.

His level is obvious looking at his gameplay from that period btw. This is, I believe, from the first round of La Liga the next season -


So circumstances played a key role in Zidane not being able to showcase his best at an international tournament, something which might have changed the perception regarding his impactfulness.

I believe Platini might have had a similar problem with the 3 World Cup tournaments that he featured in, if not for his exceptional Euro 84, since it ensured that no one would consider impactfulness being a problem for Platini in international tournaments, going forward.

 

So you're saying he's a 1980s French Paul Scholes

 

Zidane himself stated that he was at his peak at Euro 2000. Overall I would rank Platini ahead of Zidane based on their respective careers and overall influence on the teams they played in. Zidane was more gifted in terms of ball control, technique and he was also physically stronger. Platini was a better playmaker and had an incredible range of passing and spatial awareness. He linked up better with his teammates and provided a deadly attacking threat. He was in essence a combination of a creative midfielder and centre forward.

 

Depends on how the question was put to Zidane. In hindsight, Euro 2000 was indeed his peak tournament, but there is a strong possibility that it was because luck ruined his opportunity to have a better one 2 years later.

In any case, he definitely could have a 4 goal Tournament Group Stage (Euro 2004) and a 3 goal Tournament Knockout Stage (World Cup 2006), both post his prime. So him having a statistically significant World Cup 2002, smack in the middle of it, is definitely a strong possibility. And how statistically significant tournament performances define the perceptions of players is well established with examples like Maradona in WC 86.

And there is another way to look considering international tournaments are not a good comparison between the two due to their differing circumstances. If you look at their best 3 seasons in EC1 for top club teams, Zidane doesn’t look specifically less impactful. Zidane’s best 3 seasons put together give him around 8G+21A across 35 games while for Platini I believe it’s around 15G+~5A across 24 games. So both have upwards of 0.8 GAPG, which makes the impactfulness argument moot IMHO.

Ok. Not that I necessarily agree, but to each his own I suppose.

 

I'd say this only to bother Carlito

 

There is no comparison,platini is the best passer in history,also the most creative player
cruyff's dribbling and speed would make him break the opponent's defensive line and create better chances, but if we only consider passing skills,platini would be better
zidane isn’t close to platini at all,It’s a ridiculous comparison

 

Pirlo and Xavi were better passer than Platini

 

They didn’t have the intelligence,vision and creativity of Platini

 

Xavi perhaps, although Platini was superior with his long range passing (while Xavi's consistency in short & mid range passing is simply unmatched by any other player in history). I'd also have Platini as a marginally better final third passer but that's debatable. Pirlo stylistically was almost identical to Platini, I'd say, but I would still choose the latter.

Xavi & Platini would be my top-2 passers of all-time when we consider both game-controlling and creative passing (Laudrup, Maradona and possibly a few others were probably better in the final third but not overall).