It all started with a meal on November 23, 2010 at the Elysee. The then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the crown prince of Qatar and Michel Platini, head of UEFA, met to discuss the attribution of the World Cup to the small emirate and the acquisition of the PSG by the Qataris. That controversial meeting, denounced by the ineffable Joseph Blatter and well documented in the press, had a ‘win-win’ outcome for Parisians and Qataris. Since then, Qatar’s ambitious sports geopolitics project had a date marked in red on the calendar: 2022.
Not only will the men’s soccer World Cup be held in that Gulf country at the end of the year, but they also aspired to win the Champions League with Paris Saint-Germain, after having gathered a star collection with Messi, Neymar and Mbappe. In addition, the final will be played in the French capital, due to the change of venue due to the war in Ukraine. But petrodollars were not enough to make the dream of Qataris and Parisians come true.
The French team experienced another fateful night and extended their cursed team legend in Europe. PSG Galactics they stumbled this time with chance and talent. The chance that caused Donnarruma’s blunder, which with his poor clearance caused the tie and the start of Real Madrid’s comeback. The talent of Karim Benzema, who without the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo, has established himself as one of the best footballers in the world.
“Paris Nightmare”
“The nightmare of Paris”, headlines this Wednesday on its front page the newspaper ‘Le Parisien’. The 3-1 at the Bernabéu and the madridistas’ comeback, marked by the last half hour of the match in which PSG allowed themselves to be overwhelmed by Madrid as if they were a team without a soul, adds to the long list of European debacles of the Parisians. Undoubtedly, Barça’s 6-1 defeat in 2017 occupies a preferential place in that succession of nightmares, but Manchester United also came back from the tie in the round of 16 at the last minute the following year and in 2014 Chelsea had already turned them around 3-1 in the first leg. With a lost final in 2020 and a semifinalist in the previous edition, the team seemed to be getting closer to the Qatari dream. But they ran out of ear again.
This PSG curse generates more than one smile among the romantics of the beautiful game, although little room remains for romanticism in contemporary football. It also shows the limits of the club-state formula and of wanting to win only by accumulating cracks, without leaving a coach to develop his style of play, as another club-state like Manchester City, owned by the United Arab Emirates, seems to have understood better. .
PSG has a staff valued at 909 million dollars, the second most expensive in the world after City itself, according to the Transfermarkt portal. But it was of no use to him to qualify for the quarterfinals, a barrier that he only surpassed twice in the last decade. The petrodollars catapulted the Parisian team to the elite of football, but they did not help them win the Champions League, the coveted trophy for both the French – they only won it once with the triumph of Olympique de Marseille in 1993 – and the Qataris.
More than 1,368 million in transfers
This new elimination is one more stain on Qatar’s sophisticated sports ‘soft-power’ project. After acquiring the club in 2011, they modernized, increased their revenue, the women’s team became one of the best in Europe and they created a handball section with the 2012 acquisition of Paris Handball. However, his main formula for success was invest up to 1,368 million in transferswith a negative balance of 922 million.
The Qatari funds seem to have no limits – even less after the price of oil has skyrocketed with the war in Ukraine – and now they offer Mbappé a net salary of 50 million to retain him. But the golden Parisian prison seems cursed and Wednesday’s defeat accentuated doubts in the French press about the will of its most promising crack to continue at PSG or bet on a historic club, such as Madrid or Liverpool.
