The first coach that PSG signed under Qatari ownership to rise to the European elite was Carlo Ancelotti, who arrived in Paris at the end of 2011. And the first thing the Italian noticed in the Parc des Princes was the lack of organization. Nothing to do with his previous experiences at Milan, Chelsea and Juventus. “He did not seem to have international superclub ambitions,” he wrote in 2016 in his book calm leadership. “We would go out to play and on Thursday the team manager asked us if we were going to have chicken or salmon for dinner on Saturday. ‘How! Are you asking me this on Thursday? Is it not already planned?’ He didn’t even have a restaurant. The players arrived at training half an hour before and left when it was over”, detailed the coach with surprise.
A decade has passed since that and the continental track record of the Parisian team is still just as poor (the Cup Winners’ Cup of ’96) despite the 1,400 million invested in hiring (compensated with only 455 in sales), but that does not prevent him from appearing this Tuesday in the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 against Real Madrid (9:00 p.m., Movistar Champions League) as the main protagonist of one of the most symbolic duels, if not the most, in the current football industry: he, as the best example of the so-called club-states, hooked to the infinite financial muscle of an absolutist regime in the Persian Gulf, against the most refined representative of old Europe.
Two models that reflect the new geopolitical battle of this sport that, in the case of PSG and Madrid, intensifies due to the bitter confrontation that both have been maintaining in the last year, head to head like two alpha males. The underlying conflict in the Super League placed them on opposite sides – the whites at the head of the rebellion and the French club on the side of UEFA – and the Spanish entity’s attempt to sign Kylian Mbappé last summer burst all the seams of diplomacy. The mutual friendship that they trumpeted for years gave way to hostilities. The challenge between the new rich and the old aristocrat.
The Mbappé case and the Super League tense relations between both entities
In purely sporting terms, the tie concentrates a multitude of plots, subplots and questions: Benzema and Neymar (the Brazilian who hasn’t played since November 28) entered in extremis in both calls (“I’m always going to force for my team, but without taking risks, because, if not, I’ll stay in Madrid”, the Frenchman warned this Monday before the last test), the possible return of Sergio Ramos to the Bernabéu as rival (he is absent in the first leg), Mbappé against his hypothetical future club, Messi with another shirt against the whites, Ancelotti against one of his old teams, Achraf, Di María and Navas again against Madrid… A long list of lures football at a crossroads that is the culmination of months of war in the offices between PSG and Madrid that, whatever happens on the field, will not stop. Above all, while the future of Mbappé is not clear. This Tuesday, at 1:00 p.m. on the Champs-Élysées, the presidents, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and Florentino Pérez, should see each other’s faces at a meal after PSG suspended the traditional pre-match dinner.
Benzema and Neymar enter the lists ‘in extremis’, something that Ramos does not achieve
The direct clash broke out in the last week of the summer transfer market. The unusual maneuver of the merengue club to publicize to the four winds the offer of 160 million to the Parisian team for the French striker provoked an angry response from the French capital. Its sports director, Leonardo de Araújo, accused the Madrid leaders of maintaining “disrespectful, illegal and unacceptable” behavior.
There were seven days of great tension, fueled by propaganda, in which both entities displayed all their muscle because it was a matter of power and image. In Valbebebas they put 200 million on the table (so far the proposal went up) in the midst of a pandemic for a player who was free to negotiate in four months. And from Qatar they contravened one of the most elementary rules until the appearance of the club-state: get the biggest slice possible for a player who has rejected all renewal attempts and who, if he does not change his mind, will leave for free in a few months . Two roosters face to face displaying all their plumage to the contrary and to the world.
PSG made their refusal to sell a point of honour, Mbappe remained in Paris and the matchup inevitably dropped in volume. But it didn’t disappear. During the following months the taunts in both directions have been common. Al-Khelaïfi continued to criticize Madrid’s maneuvers to attract the attacker, with references even to Ancelotti and Benzema, and despised the Superliga, Florentino Pérez’s great project, assuring that he is “motivated by personal interests”.
From La Castellana, the white president did not need to summon PSG in the last assembly of delegates to launch several volleys. “There is a growing proliferation of unacceptable situations in which clubs receive indiscriminate financial support, whether from States or not, an improper practice of the EU that adulterates competition and leads football to ruin,” he said in full defense of the Superliga and of financial fair play, the breach of which has hovered over PSG’s head on several occasions despite always finishing well in the UEFA exams. In the past week, L’Equipe published that the spending on tokens of the French team amounted to 629 million, 37% of Ligue 1.
And now, after months of reproaches in the offices, the appointment on the pitch arrives. The repetition of the draw for the Champions League round of 16 due to an unprecedented error with the balls gave rise to the most iconic crossing of the new times in the football bubble. PSG’s ultimate objective, to lift the big earedspends this year to bring down his nemesis, the representative of that old Europe with whom he has had a hard time a year ago on account of the Super League and Mbappé.
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