Paris Saint Germain: A Club in Crisis
Just why can’t PSG compete with the best of the best?
When you think of the elite European clubs in world football, a few names immediately spring to mind — Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich. Football royalty.
These clubs are winners — it’s in their expectations and their DNA. They don’t expect to lose, nor to draw.
For better or for worse, their main objective is to be the best amongst the best. To be the greatest. To dominate the world of football.
The secret to winning
So, the question is now, how do they do it? Why are they so successful? In part, as common sense would suggest that they have had the most resources pooled into their operations. Perhaps that is true. Perhaps, once upon a time, they had that financial backing that is crucial to any football club’s success. This, in turn, would naturally lead the club into having more allure to the top players and coaches, building upon reputation/s of success and winning.
There is a saying in life, as in football that “success breeds success” and that is gospel. If you succeed once, there is this inherent momentum that will carry you through the rest of your days.
Look at Real Madrid, the perpetual winners of the Champions League. Slowly, but surely, they have become the most feared team to face in the knockout competition. In essence, to win, one must experience exactly what it is to win.
This experience of winning should, in theory, elevate your chances of success when the next time comes around as you have already defeated the worst enemy in your way — pressure. Nervousness runs through not only the veins of the players on the pitch but the board too.
The changing football market
Recently, there has been a shift in football, namely in its economy. With the increased level of state sponsorship and massive mogul billionaires investing in the game, the expenditure that has been occurring the past few seasons across the leagues by top teams is quite frankly, at a level that no one has seen before.
With this, they invite what in economics is called demand-pull inflation, where the value of the market as a whole — not just players and clubs — is valued at increasingly high prices. This effect is cyclical and impacts, therefore, expenditure in comparison to the global economy outside the sport. This is why you see examples of ridiculous release clauses and market values on transfermarkt and the like.
The point is, that despite what is on the surface an utterly ridiculous amount of money spent to succeed, for a club to break into that elite level, they must do it. They must invest such a high level of wealth into their clubs to break that safeguard of the exclusive membership that traditionally, only those who have been at the highest level once before could dream of attaining.
How’s your bottle?
The most famous example of this would be the crazy run of domestic and cup competition titles won by Manchester City in the English game. Current champions of the Premier League, there has been one competition that has dodged their trophy cabinet since the beginning of time — the Champions League.
A knockout competition that showcases the absolute greatest across the European continent. And as for PSG, they suffer a similar fate. With the QSI takeover in 2011, it was expected that the Parisians would slowly build their way up to success, eventually proving themselves in the Champions League… but, still, more than a decade later, this hasn’t happened.
But, they’ve done everything right. They had nurtured the best of Paris in their admittedly world-class youth facilities. They have the backing of an almost bottomless pit of cash for their transfer business and they have had the big names don the colours of their kit.
With a promise and talented squad such as theirs, they should have already broken into being regular contenders to win the entire competition — but they haven’t yet. Not to a serious extent anyways. To the fans, it may be a sign of the “bottling syndrome,” where clubs seem to fall short at the final hurdle time and time again. This is true, but why?
A long time coming
To answer that question, there is no better campaign to look at than the one just past — the horrific season of 2021-22. Delving deeper, we can see that it is a whirlwind of different factors that contribute to the lack of winning upon the precipice.
We can understand why sustainable investment in Bayern Munich’s and Real Madrid’s cases and the reliance on youth in the cases of both Barcelona and Manchester United had led them to periods of significant dominance, not only in their domestic season but in their European rivals, too.
We start the course, by highlighting the Champions League exit by Pochettino and his world-class squad, with an intense focus on that front three of Neymar, Mbappe, and Messi. When fit, they are renowned to be the best of the best, still with a lot more to give despite what was displayed throughout the season. Disunity, lack of trust, and a lack of teamwork.
Alongside some questionable decisions by the Italian manager, this ultimately lead them to their defeat against a more mentally fortified Real Madrid. But, it’s not just because they were outplayed that is the issue — it’s the fact that they were expected to win the entire competition, only to be knocked out by a Real Madrid team who had not won the Champions League for a few years running after Cristiano Ronaldo last led them to one.
What is highlighted here is the lack of mental fortitude, driven almost cyclically by the disjointed nature of the team, namely, due to the constant rotation and changes implemented partly out of necessity, but also partly out of the desire to fit every big name in the squad into the first XI.
As such, names such as Icardi, Di Maria, Wijnaldum, and Navas were just some of the many who didn’t get the running start required to maintain and retain on-field chemistry. On the pitch, this lack of teamwork extended through to the minutiae of the game. From not wanting to track back, to wanting to singlehandedly take on multiple opponents, to a lack of general concentration — this was ultimate, what led to their shockingly early exit.
Dread it, run from it, destiny still arrives
Destined to fail, the managerial requirements in hindsight needed not tactical ingenuity, but more so, elite man management and to get the best out of their players.
Additionally, the need to build chemistry amongst big-name stars, with larger-than-life personas and ultimately, big egos were there — hidden, in plain sight to see. While we can safely say that Pochettino’s decisions led to him being a failure, we cannot place the blame entirely on his shoulders. It was revealed that the signings that were made, did not fit what the former Spurs man wanted for his footballing philosophy.
While there could be another article dedicated to philosophical mismatches, the point here is that ultimately, what made the PSG project thus far, a failure is due to the board’s methods in making their success.
Organic it was not, and by that, I mean, for a club to succeed, there is an inherent need for homegrown talent. A basis. A foundation on which to build upon. Now, there needn’t be arguable over-reliance on the production of youth development — such as Manchester United in the past, and Barcelona as of late — but a balance.
Once again, the perfect example here is Real Madrid, with their Galacticos projects under Florentino Perez. Spend big, but maintain what I like to call “the Madrid way,” or the inherent ideology of the club in footballing terms.
Another way to succeed is to have a top talent scouting department such as one at Bayern Munich, which will use a quasi-Moneyball approach to signing players that eventually, “magically burst onto the scene.” An intermediary in the process of forging world-class players, Bayern will then retain them for future success for years and years.
Negligence of the foundation
In the case of PSG, this isn’t at all the method they chose to chase success. The negligence of their youth development, despite some of the best facilities in the world and the brimming hotbed of Parisian talent, they have focused on signing established stars for their brand rather than nurturing talented youngsters as the foundation of the club.
This has led to many high-profile starlets leaving the club for opportunities across the European continent. Examples include Moussa Diaby at Bayer Leverkusen, Mike Maignan at AC Milan, and Moussa Dembele who plays for rivals Olympique Lyon as of writing.
The requirement for a clear vision on how to push the club forward wasn’t there from the beginning and this implosion during the 2021/22 season showed the world exactly what was missing. Not only mentality and teamwork, but the fact that buying success without a way to drive a clear identity as not only a football club on the pitch, but ideals off it too, almost always doesn’t work.
Part of it is greed, masked as hunger for success and part of it is naivety on the part of those running the day-to-day operations, but as with historical lessons, the lack of foundation in its identity has left PSG dangling on the outskirts of the elite despite trying so hard to break in.
Greener pastures on the other side
Luckily, it seems that now the club has had a wake-up call, sacking Sporting Director Leonardo and successfully convincing their talismanic talent Kylian Mbappe to stay on for the long-term. Now, all signs are pointing to a new direction and the beginnings of a foundation that is so sorely missing from the club.
Addressing the issue of a lack of identity, the board has decided to bring in Luis Campos, former AS Monaco sporting director and the man responsible for the signings of Anthony Martial, Thomas Lemar, and a host of other names to the club. This transformed them from a club in the middle of the pack to one fighting for Champions League qualification. Leading Lille to an unthinkable win of the Ligue 1 domestic season in 2020, Campos’ specialty is clearly to instill a winning mentality, no matter where he is.
Mauricio Pochettino has also departed the club, a soured relationship with the board being the main reason. Upon rumours of a mismatched vision for PSG’s identity on the pitch, an overly cautious mind will point to historical failures as a tale of inevitable failure.
Despite this, the new man brought in was the same one who beat them during the 2020/21 season, giving rise to an incredible underdog story, built upon a vision that incorporated youth with experience and ultimately elevated the squad beyond expectations.
Personal take
For me, PSG is set in a new direction. One that looks to implement what they have been missing since the beginning in their fantastic youth development and world-class talent identification while also mending the problems of on-pitch mentality, reigniting the spirit to succeed in the long run. How they will go in achieving this, though? Only time will tell…
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