One could say that it is only justice, if football fell within any justice. Let’s just say, when you offend football, they often make you pay for it. Then if you repeat the trespasses…
This summer, PSG twice offended football by signing Lionel Messi. On the one hand by addressing a thumbs up to what was left of economic fairness in European football. On the other hand, by pursuing its casting policy to the point of absurdity. Paris still has no team, and nothing helps, not even a more intelligent recruitment than usual: no player is progressing, and the team remains totally unbalanced.
Last night Neymar was helpless, Messi useless. There was still hope that the Argentinian would catch up the sporting fiasco of his transfer by two or three brilliant gestures in the last rounds of the Champions League. They would have been enough to save face and the stake (40 million annual salary). Last night, Neymar was the slow and thickened shadow of who he was. Messi was this insignificant player that no coach would dare to leave the field.
This summer, PSG have twice offended football by recruiting Gianluigi Donnarumma. On the one hand by depriving us, in each match, of one of the very best goalkeepers in the world. On the other hand, by creating the conditions for a rivalry from which the irreproachable Keylor Navas suffered, and for which the young Donnarumma paid the price. Three years ago, it was Gianluigi Buffon who failed against Manchester United.
Predictable in unlikely defeat
Mbappé can work miracles, but that’s not enough. PSG probably lost their number 7 at the same time as this match. In addition to its hopes of winning in C1 this season, the club has also lost the achievements of its accessions to the last four of the two previous editions.
We gain a certainty: even if he crystallizes the resentment of the supporters, the coach is not the problem of this PSG, where all the coaches have completed their mandates in bitterness, where no coach can be a good coach. The players are no longer in question: they pass, the problems remain, and they are not responsible for the composition of the workforce.
Because there is a Parisian signature, whatever the man on the bench, invariants. Breaking down in the return match, after an accomplished first leg. Panic at the first blow of fate. Losing one’s nerves on the pitch and one’s concentration in disputes. To the point of succeeding in trivializing the remontada, in being predictable in the improbable defeat.
The recriminations of Mauricio Pochettino, Leonardo and Nasser Al-Khelaïfi against the refereeing are additional admissions of weakness, the admissions of a confusing and persistent immaturity, of a refusal to look their mistakes and reality in the face: the season of PSG ended on March 9 – unless it wants to reproduce such a collapse in Ligue 1 and overuse its thirteen-point lead.
Means and their use
The worst happened to the Parisian leaders. Yet another early elimination, tinged with ridicule, against their great political rival. PSG is the club where Lionel Messi no longer passes a dribble, the club in which the best goalkeeper in the world commits a fatal blunder, the club which cannot even claim to keep Mbappé.
Nasser Al-Khelaïfi has managed to economically enhance the PSG brand and give it worldwide media coverage, to develop its income and its infrastructure. But the governance of the club is deficient and the failure of the sports policy, if there is one, is without appeal.
The financial means are not enough when it comes to facing clubs which have hardly less, but which use them much better, to face teams which can be mediocre, but which remain teams. And whose coaches have real sporting power.
Will the responsibilities for this failure finally be assumed, when the president is at the heart of Qatari power, presides over the European Club Association, occupies a position of strength with UEFA and within Ligue 1, all of this a few months before the World Cup in Qatar? Swiss justice, which demanded twenty-eight months in prison against him in the FIFAgate case, may sanction him before the emir.
Those who today are going to come across the club bluntly, and rightly so, should however think back to last August, when it was de rigueur to celebrate the arrival of Messi and this team proclaimed the “best in the world” before having played the slightest match. Seven months later, she leaves the impression of not having played a single match.
