Platini aims to help home nations

While England have been regulars in the major international tournaments, the other home nations have struggled to qualify in recent years.

The Republic of Ireland have booked their place at Euro 2012, staged in Poland and Ukraine, which will be the first major tournament since the 2002 World Cup.

However, Scotland's last was the 1998 World Cup and Northern Ireland's the 1986 World Cup, while Wales featured in the 1976 European Championship.

They will all have a bigger chance of qualifying for Euro 2016, to be held in Platini's homeland of France, as it will the first to feature 24 teams - a significant increase on the traditional 16 competing at Euro 2012.

The former France captain has been an advocate of the move and rejected concern that it will dilute quality, admitting it is a deliberate attempt to aid smaller countries.

"Why is rugby popular in Wales and Scotland and Ireland?" Platini said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. "Because they can win grand slams, they can win Test matches, they can win.

"Now in football they will never win the World Cup, but it is a long time since they participated in the finals, so I have to expand to help the development of football in these countries."

2022 World Cup

While that will boost many European countries, moving the 2022 World Cup to winter will cause huge disruption to the European leagues.

Platini has been criticised for backing Qatar's bid for a summer tournament, only to press for it to be moved to winter.

That would have a major impact on European leagues for up to three seasons around 2022, as they shift their calendar in a bid to accommodate a major tournament.

But Platini reckons that leagues will finish, at most, a month later, while denying that French president Nicolas Sarkozy told him to vote for the Gulf state.

"The vote and the summer are two different things," he argues. "I voted for a region that never received the World Cup, that was my philosophy, not because Sarkozy had lunch with me.

"I have enough personality to decide what is good for football, not for the president of France or the prime minister of Great Britain, who also wanted my vote.

"But I thought, after South Africa 2010, where it was zero degrees at 5pm and there was no life for the fans, how can we ask the fans and players to go to this country when it is 50 or 60 degrees in July? I think the best time to play is winter.

"The World Cup is the most important moment for the game every four years, but where does it say we always have to pay in June?"