HIGH FLYERS
Qatar-backed big-spending PSG have joined the...
AT the time it felt like an overwhelming demonstration of Barcelona’s sheer dominance; in retrospect it may have sown the seeds for their current crisis.
When Barcelona recorded t hat extraordinary 6-1 win over Paris SaintGermain in last season’s Champions League last 16, coming back from a 4-0 first-leg deficit and scoring three goals from the 88th minute to the end of added time, it consolidated some essential truths.
Neymar was the star of the show that night, but he clearly did not feel it was perceived that way. ‘Neymar won the game — but Messi was the hero,’ said one person close to the Brazilian player, who this summer propelled football into yet another unthinkable stratosphere with his £ 198million move from Barcelona to PSG. ‘The little boy who came from Santos is not a little boy any more and he started to understand that time flies. He’s 25 and will be 26 in February. It was time to get his position in football history.’
In short, at Barca, he could never supplant Lionel Messi.
And in the mind of PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi it hardened the determination not to be humiliated again. For six years since they bought PSG, Qatar Sport s I nvest ment, founded by Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, the richest country in the world by GDP, have laboured to be at the top table of European football and made only the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
After PSG’s 4-0 home-leg win against Barca it appeared they were about to break through the glass ceiling, so the crushing disappointment of their subsequent exit morphed into this extraordinary summer when they broke the world transfer record twice, bringing not only Neymar from Barcelona but plucking Monaco’s teenager, Kylian Mbappe, who looked bound for Real Madrid, for £166m, a move which is officially a loan for now to circumnavigate UEFA’s strict Financial Fair Play rules. Both scored on Friday night, Mbappe on his debut, in the 5-1 win over Metz.
In doing so PSG are undoubtedly ready and among the favourites for this season’s Champions League, with their opener on Tuesday at Celtic, but they have also incurred the anger of Real Madrid, Barcelona and UEFA, which has taken the unprecedented step of prematurely announcing their intent to investigate for breach of Financial Fair Play regulations.
Of course, the Spanish clubs complaining about state-funded mega-rich clubs poaching their players is a bit rich given their modus operandi over the years and the European Union judgments against both clubs for illegal state subsidies.
As La Liga president Javier Tebas, essentially a mouthpiece for bristling Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barca, put it this week, PSG have not been so much caught peeing in the pool as urinating from the diving board.
In 2016 PSG’s revenue, already boosted artificially, according to a previous UEFA ruling, by their £160m-ayear deal with the Qatar Tourism Authority, was £389m; this summer they have effectively spent £380m. The mother of all showdowns now looms in the European Court of Justice, where UEFA’s rules surely will be challenged by PSG once the seemingly inevitable sanction — which could mean being excluded from next season’s Champions League — comes.
For the Premier League powers of Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham, there is also a huge threat. The distance between Premier League clubs and Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus has been painfully obvious in recent years. PSG may now push them further down the pecking order.
Ossie Ardiles, the Tottenham legend, played for PSG in 1982-83 when the Falklands War made it impossible for the Argentine to continue his career in the UK and has watched the rise of his former club closely.
‘PSG was big when I played there, because it was the only club in Paris, but of course not as big as it is now,’ he said. ‘The idea of sett i ng up Paris Saint- Germain [which was only founded in 1970] was because clubs were playing all over France but not in Paris. It went from strength to strength and now they are the richest club in the world. They have been making an impression for a long time but this now is one thing more, to make PSG a real force in international football. They are No 1 by far in France so the next thing is the Champions League. Signing Neymar and Mbappe is moving towards that.’
Brendan Rodgers faces the unenviable task of facing them down in Glasgow on Tuesday.
‘They’re in the competition looking
to win it,’ the Celtic manager said. ‘That’s why that investment is there and that’s been their path for the last few years. They are a team full of world-class players with great experience and it will be very difficult to stop them but it’s a great challenge for us.’ havi, the agent who brokered the Neymar deal from PSG to Barcelona, says that it represents a turning point in European football. Zahavi also played a part in Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea in 2003 and compares the two seismic events. ‘ I feel the same thing that I felt when I brought Roman Abramovich to Chelsea,’ says Zahavi. ‘That was a dramatic change for the English football. I think it’s the same thing now with Neymar in France. It will change the whole of French football.’ David Dein, Arsenal vicechairman in 2003, said that Abramovich had parked his Russian tanks on their lawn and was firing million pound notes at them. Now, it is Qatar which has metaphorically parked its tanks on the lawns of the European elite.
In Barcelona they have not experienced a humiliation of this nature since Luis Figo left for Real Madrid in 2000. The self-styled greatest club in the world simply does not lose star players and the after-shocks are being felt. A no-confidence motion in president Josep-Maria Bartomeu is gathering momentum. Messi and Luis Suarez are reportedly upset that their close friend has left, knowing that it weakens the team. The board of directors is estranged from the players.
Undoubtedly Barca were blind-sided by PSG this summer, their key weakness being that Spanish law insists that player contracts have a buy-out clause. However, it was assumed that £198m was a price no one would ever pay so therefore Neymar was secure.
Ironically, Barca started the summer pursuing PSG midfielder Marco Verratti, who wanted to leave. According to those close to the Neymar deal, when Barca president Bartomeu rang his PSG counterpart Al-Khelaifi to complain over their Neymar approach, it fell to the Qatari to point out the crucial difference. Barca had tried to do the same to one of his players, but Verratti was contractually bound to PSG — Neymar though had the buy-out clause and was perfectly within his rights to leave.
For Ardiles, the move was logical for Neymar and simply reflects a step towards a new age of football which will emerge once the dominance of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo passes.
‘In Barcelona he was always going to be No 2 to Messi,’ he said. ‘In Brazil, he is already the No 1 and now in Paris he is going to be absolutely the No 1.’
After victory against Metz on Friday, the real test starts on Tuesday against Celtic. The gauntlet has been thrown down, not so much to the Premier League, very much makeweights in the Champions League in recent years, but to the real powers of Europe.
PSG have their sights set on Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus. And, it appears, nothing will stop them from gate-crashing the top table.