Next month Michel Platini will celebrate his 1,000th day as president of Uefa. If it feels as if he has been around for longer, it’s probably because he has attempted to do more in less than three years than his predecessor, Lennart Johansson, achieved in 17 years at the helm.

Platini is not the typical exponent of the blazer brigade, content to sit on his hands, quaff champagne and preserve the status quo.

Like every politician, Platini has his enemies. For example, those who see him as the evil demi-god of an anti-Premier League, anti-Real Madrid plot. They claim that his plans to introduce greater oversight and curbs on spending and debt are motivated largely by “envy” towards those who have been successful. Much of that is bluster and politics, coupled with — and this is definitely an area where he can improve — his inability to get certain points across, opting for illadvised sweeping statements rather than specific policy points.

One example of that was his public criticism of the debt of Barclays Premier League clubs when, in reality, there is a stark difference between the debt held by the likes of Manchester United or Liverpool and the debt of a club such as Arsenal. The latter was incurred to build a genuine asset that generates revenue, the former is a function of the owners’ leveraged buyout and contributes nothing to their respective clubs.

Platini seems moved by a genuine desire to fix problems and to do so quickly. He effectively persuaded the G-14 to disband — thereby negating or, at least, postponing the threat of a European Super League — and channelled them into the European Club Association (ECA), a far more representative body. The ECA is far from a perfect solution, of course — as you would expect from a body that is supposed to represent Real and Derry City — but it is a step in the right direction and, at least, gives clubs a voice at Uefa’s table.

His opposition to instant video replays remains grating — this week, he said: “If we do that, we might as well pack it in and go play on our PlayStations” — but his introduction of additional assistants behind the goals, which is being tested in the Europa League this year, is to be applauded. This was a personal battle for Platini, who obtained special dispensation to push it through without the blessing of Fifa’s international board.

The jury is out on the Europa League’s format, but it is undeniably better than the previous one. Centralising the sale of TV rights, working more closely with broadcasters and overhauling the marketing of the competition can only help the Champions League’s ugly stepsister.

As for his campaign against the movement of underage players, the best you can say is that his heart is in the right place and that there is only so much he can do, given the different legislation in countries across the Continent. Again, some of his comments have been ill advised — calling it “child trafficking” is silly — and Uefa’s policy of looking for irregularities in the existing rules and hammering clubs with the stiffest of penalties, as happened to Chelsea, smacks of somebody going after a mouse with a Howitzer when a full and proper disinfestation would be far more effective.

A proper system to compensate clubs who lose players in this way would be a far more efficient (and fair) way of dealing with the problem, but Platini is going with the sledgehammer approach. However, at least after years of inaction somebody is doing something about one of the grossest injustices in football.

His plans for “financial fair play” are more difficult to decipher. Uefa’s executive committee approved them as a “concept” last week, which is Uefa-speak for “we think we need to do something, we haven’t figured out the specifics but eventually we will”. He views certain excesses as an ethical issue: a form of “financial doping”.

Which, basically, it is. If you buy Petr Cech, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney, David Villa, Steven Gerrard, Maicon, Giorgio Chiellini, Franck Ribéry and Cesc Fàbregas, win the Champions League but go bust a year later you have, effectively, cheated by spending money you don’t have.

The problem is how you prevent it from happening. Most of the suggestions emanating from Uefa’s headquarters involve linking expenditure to revenue. It ensures that clubs won’t go bankrupt, but in practice it is a surefire way to guarantee that the rich get richer because it caps expenditures but not revenues. Which is why this is one of the things that Platini and Europe’s elite clubs agree on.

Platini has made mistakes and will likely make more. But in a role too often populated by lazy, self-congratulatory empty blazers, he is putting his shoulder to the wheel. And there is something to be said for that.