PSG, not a very nice club

Last week, L’Équipe reported that the total cost of PSG’s first team squad had risen to 625 million euros. To put that into perspective, I will add that Real Madrid’s is somewhere around the 400 million mark. But PSG, as Javier Tebas keeps reminding us, have state backing behind them, which allows them to pay exorbitant transfer fees and salaries which not only gives them an unfair competitive advantage, but also inflates the market, and that affects clubs like Madrid, who don’t benefit from resources other than what income they generate through the normal channels. PSG aren’t even particularly well viewed in France, where the traditional clubs see them as an artificial outfit funded by a far-off country, a sheikh’s plaything.

Then there was the deplorable way they behaved in the failed Super League - an initiative which I have to say, I don’t like very much. They flirted with the idea for a while before siding with UEFA - with whom Al Khelaifi is now president of the European Clubs Association, taking over a position which was previously held by Andrea Agnelli. So he now has the guarantee that Ceferin will look the other way whenever the issue of Financial Fair Play is mentioned - a question which, by the way, the fine print of the Super League proposal didn’t address either.They established a percentage limit for the cost of a squad in relation to a club’s budget, but there were no measures to impede external cash injections, the real root of the problem.

And then we have the ultras, tolerated and even spoiled throughout France, but particularly at PSG. We all know that the ultras are like spoiled kids - the more you give them, the more they demand, to a point where they even turn against their parents - or the club. But, whichever you look at it, that can only be a good thing for Madrid because one of the reasons why Mbappé wants to come to Madrid is because he cannot stand those hooligans, and even fears them. Anyway, this tie pits a genuine representative of football, one which is universally admired, against a club which is the polar opposite - there couldn’t really be much more of a difference between the two.