Michel Platini has been elected Uefa's new president after
beating previous incumbent Lennart Johansson in a vote in
Dusseldorf.
Johansson had spent 17 years in the post, but will now pass control
over to French footballing legend Platini.
The former Juventus star won the election at Uefa's Congress by 27
votes to 23 to deny Johansson a fifth term in office.
Among Platini's election pledges was a promise to cut the maximum
number of places in the UEFA Champions League for one country to
three.
He had also been advocating the introduction of two extra assistant
referees to aid match officials, rather than resort to the use of
video technology.
During a wonderful playing career, Platini won virtually all the
game's major honours, with only a World Cup title eluding his
grasp.
Platini did play in three World Cup finals tournaments, but his
finest hour was in captaining France to the 1984 European
Championship title on home soil, when he was the competition's top
scorer.
At club level, he was a huge success at St Etienne and Italian
giants Juventus, and was named European Footballer of the Year
three times in a row in the mid-1980s.
He retired from playing in 1987 and took over as France's national
team coach a year later before stepping down in 1992 after the
European Championship in Sweden.
Since then, he has played a prominent role in the organisational
side of the game, and was a key figure in France staging the 1998
World Cup.