On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero, said the famous line in the 1999 film Fight Club.
In football, on a long enough timeline, every hero will eventually fade into insignificance. Or worse, infamy.
Many modern fans only know Michel Platini as the president of Uefa who has just been banned from the game for eight years, and not as one of the greatest footballers of all time.
His spectacular fall from grace is nothing to celebrate.
A post-playing career in the murky world of football politics came to a depressingly inevitable conclusion this week when the French legend, alongside Fifa president Sepp Blatter, was banned as part of a Fifa ethics investigation.
For those of us who grew up bewitched by his brilliance on the pitch, it was a sad end for the man who saw himself as the future emperor of world football.
In the late 1970s and 80s, Platini was a fantasy footballer, with few peers before or since.
Physically, he was no Cristiano Ronaldo. But he was deceptively strong and, in an era when skilled players were easy targets for hatchet men, incredibly brave.
Platini could glide through a match, directing operations in a manner just like Andres Iniesta does today. He had an astonishing turn of pace that could cut through defences at will, especially as part of France’s mid-1980s dream midfield that also included Alain Giresse and Jean Tigana.
Few in the modern game have a range of passing like Platini had and, like Johan Cruyff, he had a Pythagorean understanding of space on a football pitch.
Then there were the goals. He is often perceived as a master of the dead ball – and his free kicks were indeed works of art – but he could score all types of goals.
His annus mirabilis was 1984, when he won a Serie A title and the European Cup Winners’ Cup with Juventus, and the second of his three consecutive Ballon d’Or awards.
He saved his best for his country. Platini’s single-handed domination of that summer’s European Championship in France, is only rivalled by Diego Maradona in Mexico at the World Cup two years later.
In five matches, Platini scored an incredible, and record, nine goals, including the tournament’s opening goal against Denmark, hat-tricks against Belgium and Yugoslavia, and the first, and effectively winning, goal in the 2-0 victory over Spain in the final. Platini’s masterpiece came in the semi-final, when he led his country to a 3-2 win over Portugal.
In one of European football’s most fabled matches, Platini scored the winning goal in the last minute of extra time.
Arms wide open, celebrating to a backdrop of a delirious Marseille crowd and John Motson’s goosebump-inducing commentary, is how Platini should have been remembered.
Fans like to think of football as a battle between the forces of good and evil. Platini’s football used to bring light to football stadiums, but he crossed over to the dark side the day he aligned himself with Blatter.
Unlike his only rival for the title of France’s greatest player, Zinedine Zidane, Platini is no man of the people, and perhaps never was. He is an establishment man and will be vilified for his part in the Fifa scandal. But perhaps on a long enough timeline, history will forgive him.
akhaled@thenational.ae
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