KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: The international footballers’ association has rejected sharply to rebuff reports that Michel Platini was to take up a position as adviser to president Philippe Piat.

Platini’s four-year suspension for accepting a ‘disloyalty payment’ from FIFA ended in October. The ban cost him the chance of a power transfer from the presidency of Europe’s UEFA to that of the world governing body.

For the past year he has been sounding out various football organisations about the prospect of slipping back into the game’s corridors of power through a side door, aware that a return to UEFA or FIFA would be politically impossible.

Earlier this week reports emerged from France that Platini would become the personal adviser to Piat, veteran French leader of FIFPRO with a particular focus on player concerns and development.

This has now been strenuously denied by FIFPro.

A statement said: “In light of media reports linking Michel Platini to a role without our organisation, FIFPRO would like to put on record that no such poisitin gas been discussed let alone agreed by the FIFPRO board.”

Piat, born in Casablanca, was a winger who made more than 250 French league appearances for Strasbourg and Sochaux and was elected to lead the national players’ union in 1969. He has been its joint president with Sylvain Kastendeuch since 2006.

His age – 77 – has prompted increasing speculation about the post-Piat leadership of FIFPRO.

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