Artemio Franchi

Artemio Franchi (Italy)
UEFA president from 15 March 1973 to 12 August 1983

• Born on 8 January 1922, Artemio Franchi was a brilliant football administrator who loved the game and enjoyed a splendid career that was cut short by a tragic road accident in Tuscany in August 1983.

• He served as UEFA's president for ten years, having been elected as the third president at the UEFA Congress in Rome in the spring of 1973. Mr Franchi's first attachment to the game came as a player, and then as a referee and refereeing administrator. He became president of AC Fiorentina, rose through the ranks of the Italian Football League and Italian Football Association (FIGC), and served twice as president of the latter body – from 1967 to 1976 and from 1978 to 1980.

• Mr Franchi became a UEFA committee member in 1962, and a UEFA vice-president in 1968. As president, he made a significant contribution to the modernisation of the UEFA competitions, advocating an increase in the number of final-round teams for the 1980 European Championship in Italy to eight, and overseeing the introduction of the UEFA Cup. He was tireless in his efforts to reduce violence in the game, and was acutely aware of the power that football held as a social phenomenon.

• Competent, diplomatic, intelligent and charming, Mr Franchi was a man of culture who valued human contact. His sudden death was mourned by everyone within the European game. Stadiums in Florence and Siena are named after him.