How Monaco became a powerhouse with crowds of just 9,000
A fine climate, low taxes and, above all, excellent scouting have turned the club into European force
The success of Monaco in 2016-17 might even be remembered one day as a positive legacy of some of the most divisive policies of former Uefa president Michel Platini, the deposed king of European football, whose attempts to control the new hierarchy of the 21st century game were not always popular.
It was Platini’s enforcement of Financial Fair Play, a reaction to the petrodollars flowing into the game in the last decade that obliged Monaco’s billionaire Russian owner Dimitry Rybolovlev to find another way to sustain a successful club, and the results have yielded the most exciting young team in Europe this season.
Juventus visit Stade Louis II tonight for the first leg of their Champions League semi-final against a club who might not be able to lavish fees on players the way in which they briefly did on Radamel Falcao and James Rodríguez, signed for a combined total of more than €100million (£84.4million), but still have a strong hand to play.
Monaco offer a high standard of living in a principality that has always attracted good players, and over the past few years they have attracted some of the most promising young French players in Ligue 1, including Tiemoué Bakayoko (Rennes), Thomas Lemar (Caen), Djibril Sidibé (Lille), Benjamin Mendy (Marseille) and the Parisian teenager Kylian Mbappé, who was courted all over Europe.
Mbappé chose Monaco because he and his father and adviser, Wilfried, saw the club as the place to play first-team games and launch his professional career. It has proved the perfect platform for him and a number of players at different stages of their careers.
Mbappé, who made his Monaco debut at 16 years, 357 days, breaking the club record held by Thierry Henry, still lives in the academy dormitory when his parents are not visiting him in the south of France.
For those times, he has an apartment in the city, but when he is alone, he moves back into his old academy room and, yet to pass his driving test, relies on the club transport to get around.
What has made Monaco such an unlikely European powerhouse? As well as excellent scouting, and the attraction of a fine climate, it should not be ignored that Monaco’s French players are subject to the same preferential tax rates as the super-rich Monégasque population and their foreign signings pay no tax at all on their earnings.
What Monaco do not have is many fans, in a city where the population diminishes hugely during the winter. They have averaged home gates of around 9,000 this season, the lowest in the league, and there were only 9,169 fans at Saturday’s pivotal home win over Toulouse, which leaves them three points clear of Paris St-Germain in Ligue 1 with a game in hand.
There is no public transport out of Monaco after evening games, making it almost impossible for fans to come in for matches, and there is precious little car parking.
The commercial operation is tiny compared to the top European clubs and there is no prospect of Monaco being able to generate big profits outside of player trading. Monaco do not feature in the top 30 Deloitte Football Money League for 2016, which features 12 English clubs, including Newcastle (21st) and Sunderland (29th). Becoming self-sufficient was impossible under FFP on the kind of budget that Rybolovlev had introduced. Since then, Monaco have been through a golden period in recruitment. There are five Monaco scouts in the Paris region alone, which is where they first spotted Mbappé, who grew up a PSG fan.
In France, there is not the same arms race in teenageplayer recruitment that exists among the Premier League academies, with some boys only selecting their professional clubs when they leave regional Federation Francaise de Football academies, such as Clairefontaine.
It means that Ligue 1 clubs are prone to raids from their English counterparts for the best 16-yearolds but, increasingly, boys are seeing the benefit of developing in French clubs such as Monaco where there is an obvious route to the first team, with Mbappé the prime example.
Monaco is run on a day-to-day basis by vice-president Vadim Vasilyev and there have been a number of sporting directors, with Antonio Cordón currently in the position. What has not changed has been excellent scouting at all levels. Monaco signed Anthony Martial from Lyon for £5million in 2013, and sold him to Manchester United two years later for a fee that could rise to £60million.
While Monaco have proved themselves adept at picking the best French talent, at the other end of the scale has been the rehabilitation of Falcao, who came back to the club last summer having failed to make any impression on loan at Manchester United and then Chelsea.
He managed one goal in 11 appearances for Chelsea last season, and his last minutes for the club were in a solitary substitute appearances in a 1-0 home defeat by Swansea City last April.
He has 25 goals this season, having been made club captain under coach Leonardo Jardim.
A university graduate, Jardim may well be in demand this summer, along with many of his key players. But it will be interesting to see whether a league and Champions League double solves a long-standing problem for Rybolovlev. Monaco’s owner, a long-term resident, has yet to gain a Monégasque passport.
He famously paid a €50million (£42million) fine to the FFF in 2014, judged to be the scale of the advantage Monaco’s football team enjoyed through the principality’s tax system. With even greater success, and potentially their first league title since 2000, that issue is likely to resurface, and there may have to be another payment to their peers in French football who have united against Monaco in the past.
Getting thus far is one thing, but sustaining the success on crowds of 9,000 is a conjuring trick that Monaco will have to pull off over and again.