TOO GOOD TO GO DOWN?

PSG’S 2007- 08 season started with optimism, only to become a woeful campaign that went down to the wire. A star- studded side survived by a whisker – but on- field matters were only half of the battle

The 800 Paris Saint- Germain fans who have travelled to Sochaux on this tense Saturday evening have stopped singing. It’s May 17, 2008, and France’s capital club – Ligue 1 ever- presents since 1975, UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup victors in 1996, two- time champions up to this point – are playing their final game of the season. Sochaux have levelled the scoring thanks to a header from midfielder Guirane N’daw. With 15 minutes to go, PSG are one goal away from relegation.

Paul Le Guen’s men had started the night in 16th place, but they’re 17th as things stand because relegation rivals Toulouse are beating Valenciennes. More than ever, the risk of seeing PSG sink into the second tier is very real. If Lens – currently 18th and drawing with Bordeaux – find a winner, the Parisians’ fate will be sealed.

The tension at the Stade Auguste- Bonal is desperate – palpable. A press box packed with journalists waits for the earthquake. Everything is in place for the great fall of PSG. It has been a horrible campaign from start to finish, after all, and one final twist of fate would complete their misery. Throughout this entire campaign, the Paris outfit have lacked confidence, cohesion and self- belief. They have struggled for momentum and results, and won only nine matches.

But could this really be the day that witnesses PSG collapsing into the biggest crisis of their history?

A DISASTER FROM DA Y ONE

In 2006- 07, PSG had finished 15th in Ligue 1. By the end of March in that campaign, they were almost at rock bottom, sitting 19th in the table with nine games to go. However, an extraordinary final run of six wins – as many as they’d posted all season – and two draws with just one defeat ensured they stayed up that year with time to spare.

Looking up then towards dark clouds’ silver linings, it felt as if this was a good lesson for the French behemoths; one that could focus the minds of players, from youngsters such as Youssouf Mulumbu and David N’gog to the well- established likes of Mickael Landreau, Mario Yepes, Jerome Rothen and Pauleta ( whose 15 goals, including four penalties, had somehow made him the league’s leading scorer that season). Surely, from here, the only way was up.

So it was, then, that a wave of optimism took hold in the summer of 2007. Well- regarded centre- half Zoumana Camara and Marseille striker Peguy Luyindula had moved to Paris, after the January arrival of Argentina international Marcelo Gallardo, and president Alain Cayzac was feeling positive.

“I trust Paul Le Guen to find the solution that will make us win,” he tooted to media in pre- season, Le Guen having joined in January following a forgettable stint with Rangers. “We don’t forget that we endured a tough season last year, which left some scars. But we’re ambitious and I’m convinced that we’ll have a much better season, even if we don’t claim that we will win the league. I am confident.”

The owners also believed. PSG had been bought from TV network Canal+ by investment firms Colony Capital, Butler Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley for € 41 million in 2006, and the new hierarchy were confident of creating something interesting at the Parc des Princes after slowly paying off the club’s debts.

They may not have admitted it publicly, but inside the club there was a genuine belief that PSG could be title contenders in 2007- 08. Only two years ago, Le Guen had won the third of three consecutive league titles with Lyon. As a player, too, he’d been a respected PSG captain over seven years, winning seven major trophies in that time.

Yet, somehow, Le Guen and his players now managed to prolong PSG’S pain for another season – and this time, it was worse.

“On paper, this was a team full of internationals, such as Pauleta, Landreau, Luyindula and Yepes, as well as exciting youngsters like Mamadou Sakho and Clement Chantome,” recalls Rothen, one of the biggest names in that dressing room, as a France international.

“We had big goals and big ambitions. But our season never took off. Nothing went our way. We had no luck, and plenty of injuries,

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The ultras did their best to help PSG’S nervous stars “Give us a smile, Paul! No? OK”

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and we lost confidence. The negative spiral brought us down really quickly. It was almost like we had forgotten how to play football and win matches.”

The truth is that PSG’S 2007- 08 season felt like a disaster ready to happen from day one. They didn’t record their first win of the season until matchday six, against Le Mans. After 12 fixtures, they had won only once and sat 16th in the table. By the end of November, PSG were in the bottom three, after another miserable defeat to Nice in which teenage hopeful N’gog scored what would prove his only league goal of the campaign.

It was a crisis, all right; a horrible nightmare for this giant of a club with designs on getting back into the Champions League. At that point, their annual budget of € 70m was the third- biggest in France, behind Lyon (€ 145m) and Marseille (€ 97m). Simply, the whole thing was an absolute mess.

BANNERS, BANS AND BROKEN BOTTLES

Le Guen was failing to find the answers, and PSG spent five weeks in the relegation zone as a result.

The former centre- back’s man- management was questioned, and a string of strange coaching decisions lost him some respect among the media. More importantly, Le Guen lacked the charisma required to remobilise his players. Instead, they just drifted. There was never

a clash or a fracture, as such, between the manager and his players – that is, he never truly lost the dressing room – but most of them weren’t really keen on his presence, either. He struggled to get his messages across, and PSG never got going.

“Le Guen was never the right coach for the job,” remembers one player from that side, who wishes to remain anonymous. “He had a great squad, but he simply wasn’t good enough. It felt like he had a Porsche but was driving it more like a Fiat. I’m convinced that with a better manager, we would have been able to fight for a top- five finish. Instead, it was a long and painful season when pretty much nothing went our way .”

It’s very easy to blame Le Guen. He took over from Guy Lacombe halfway through the 2006- 07 campaign, after a difficult 10 months spent in Scotland, and was tasked with keeping a floundering PSG above water. He did so. The Parisians were 17th when he arrived, and finished 15th. There was nothing revolutionary about what he did, but the new boss at least made a positive impact in steadying the ship and avoiding a catastrophic relegation.

But that positivity didn’t last too long. Despite their strong finish to that season, Le Guen looked adrift from then on, and didn’t respond well to the increasing pressure from media and fans. He was often targeted by PSG’S unforgiving ultras: on numerous occasions, they asked the club to sack him, or Le Guen to leave of his own accord.

As ever, though, the share of blame lay somewhere in between. Failures of such extent are rarely, if ever, the fault of a coach alone, and PSG’S hapless players had to shoulder a fair share of the burden. Despite the relative strengths of a squad stacked with experienced internationals, team spirit was never the greatest until it really had to be, and remained absent during long, sorry patches of poor form. Ultimately, the Parisians were blighted by the presence of various individuals who thought far more about themselves than the team and the football club.

Portuguese striking legend Pauleta was not one of those. He was, however, an ageing leader who signed off in 2007- 08 with the worst goalscoring season ( eight league goals) of his eight- year career in France, before retiring at the end of the campaign. And things were just as tough defensively for PSG: they kept only five clean sheets in the 19 Ligue 1 fixtures that followed a winter break in which they teetered just above the trapdoor.

The paradox is that while they laboured in Ligue 1, Le Guen’s PSG excelled in their other domestic competitions that season. This was clearly more of a cup team, more than capable of pulling off isolated excellence on their day but not for a sustained spell. They lifted the Coupe de la Ligue, beating fellow relegation- battlers Lens 2- 1 in the final with a stoppage- time strike from Bernard Mendy, and they also reached the final of the Coupe de France, where they lost narrowly to Lyon in extra time.

However, even their League Cup triumph was marred by a banner unfurled by ultras insulting the Lens natives. It read: ‘ Paedophiles, unemployed and inbred: welcome to the Ch’tis’ – ‘ Ch’tis’ being the uncomplimentary nickname given to those hailing from that region in the north of France, and which featured in the title of 2008 hit film Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, the country’s second- highest- grossing movie of all time.

It sparked a national outrage. One of the club’s ultras group, the Boulogne Boys – among the oldest hooligan firm in France – was disbanded in response, following an investigation. Lens mayor Guy Delcourt, presumably not unaware of the scoreline, demanded the match be replayed after the incident. It wasn’t, but PSG were fined and banned from the following season’s tournament before getting the sanction overturned on appeal.

Despite the victory of their appeal, the incident tarnished PSG’S image and portrayed their supporters in a negative way once again. It would not be the last time, either. The club has suffered several issues with its ultras over recent seasons – particularly the Kop of Boulogne, a racist and violent faction of PSG’S fanbase. In 2007, the death of one of its members, Julien Quemener, following a Europa League home defeat to Hapoel Tel Aviv, will forever remain one of the darkest pages in the club’s history.

PSG’S problems in 2007- 08 were not limited to performances on the pitch. Their ultras, notorious for their violence, weren’t prepared to accept the team’s poor results.

“THE ONLY WAY WE COULD WAKE UP THE PLAYERS WAS TO BE AGGRESSIVE AND MAKE VISITS TO THE TRAINING GROUND”