PSG head, Paris mayor see red in stadium dispute
The chairman of Qatar-owned PSG and the mayor of Paris have fallen out publicly over the club’s stadium, the Parc des Princes, raising doubts about the future home of the capital’s only first division team.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo were once seen regularly together in the VIP seats of the stadium, but are no longer on speaking terms. At the heart of the quarrel is Khelaifi’s desire to buy the 48,000-seater stadium from the city, which Hidalgo’s leftwing administration has blocked over the last year, including in a vote by the municipal council on February 6.
“We’ve wasted years wanting to buy the Parc,” Khelaifi said angrily last week on the sidelines of a UEFA meeting. “It’s over now. We want to move from the Parc.” In other acidic comments, he said last month he wanted “respect” from the mayor’s office, adding: “We haven’t had it.”
The stakes are high for PSG which wants to follow the model of other major European football clubs by developing hospitality facilities at the stadium and increasing its capacity to 60,000 seats. It signed a new 30-year lease for the Parc in 2013, however — two years after the Qatari statebacked takeover of the club — meaning they are committed in theory to 2043 unless there are clauses allowing them to break the contract.
For the city, seeing PSG leave the Parc would be a disaster, with the capital lacking another sports club capable of selling out its vast steeply banked stands in western Paris. “We don’t want to carry on talking to PSG through the media,” deputy Paris mayor, Emmanuel Gregoire, told reporters on Sunday. “We’ve got things to say to them and we imagine they’ve got things to say to us. “What we want is to get back to work without further comment. PSG will never leave the Parc des Princes.”
Most observers see the clash as a game of brinkmanship, with PSG having no easy options to move and the city having lots to lose if its prestigious tenant walked away. PSG let it be known they were interested in buying the much larger Stade de France, the national sports stadium, but decided against submitting a bid before the deadline at the beginning of January.