Paris aspires to Real Madrid's throne
The big news in European football this week took place in Glasgow, where old, beloved Celtic were steamrollered by opulent PSG. Five-nil, the worse ever defeat at home suffered by Celtic, that team that won the European Cup in 1967, beating Inter in the final. That achievement, with honest, intense football, enriched by the dribbling of the wee Johnstone, had a huge impact in that era. They were the first side from the north of the continent to win the European Cup. It brought in a new era, of forceful football, which led to people making more than a few mistakes, above all in Spain, where there weren't any rough Scots. There were 'Johnstones', yes, but they were cast aside in favour of tireless big men.
Paris used to look down on football
Those were other times. Back then, before, and for a long time after, Paris looked down its nose at football. Paris, city of writers and painters, of fashion, of intellectualism, ignored football, leaving it for the wine-growing and industrial hinterland and the ports: Stade Reims, Saint Etienne, Lille, Olympique Marseille, Girondins, Olympique Lyon... these are the French clubs whose names have resonated around Europe. Red Star is a long time in the past now, Matra Racing Paris, with Luis Fernández, never really took off. Years ago, Then Canal+, in order to improve its market share of football fans in Paris, backed PSG...
PSG has put Paris on the footballing map
But it's only now that the club has hit the heights, with Qatari investment. Overnight, Paris is alive with football, with the attacking trident of Mbappé-Cavani-Neymar, a response to the much debated bbC and the hoped for Messi-Suárez-Dembélé. They are the three princes of the Parc des Princes, that sacred ground where the Tour always used to finish, where Real Madrid won its first European Cup. Pure Paris. The new PSG has something artificial about it, becuase more than a work of Paris, its really more a team of the country of Qatar, as Tebas complained so vociferously, but the side has managed to light the fires of football under the Eiffel Tower. Paris, which already had everything else, covets Madrid's throne.
