The main body of this article is translated from The Athletic
Due to the need for expression, some deletions and additions have been made to the original text
The original article was first published in March 2023
Original author by Dan Sheldon
Translation / Sun Qi
Edited / Song Xinyu, Huo Xieyuan
For Paris Saint-Germain, the rout at the Allianz Arena more than a month ago seemed like yesterday's repetition of a mymare of several years: with a four-goal advantage in the first leg of the round of 16 in 2016/17, they completed a 6-1 extreme comeback by Barcelona at Camp Nou; In the last half hour of the second leg of last year's 1/8 final, Pochettino's side held a 2-0 aggregate scoreline, but it ended up being the backdrop for Benzema's 17-minute hat...
In the Champions League, which is highly regarded by the club, Paris' ambitions have been prematurely transformed more than once. As one of the richest clubs in the world, they have never been able to climb to the top of the European stage, even though they have won the domestic trophy.
Although being blocked from the quarter-finals of the Champions League is no longer a new thing for Paris, after the club invested for many years and even heavily formed the football horror combination of Messi, Neymar and Mbappe, this exit is undoubtedly a heavy blow, and the aftershocks on and off the field have intensified today.
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Three months ago, when Argentina lifted the Hercules Cup at the Lusel Stadium, the Qataris' enthusiasm and attention to Messi led most people to think that the extension of Messi's contract with Paris would be just a matter of formality.
However, with Paris Saint-Germain once again on the top eight of the Champions League and facing the fact that there are actually less than 10 weeks left on his contract, the attitude of Messi and Paris towards the renewal of his contract has also become ambiguous.
For Messi, who is about to turn 36, his career has no regrets from the moment he lifted the Hercules Cup. Therefore, Messi's whereabouts actually depend more on his own plans for the future: to hit the club honor while there is still a fight, or to the United States and the Middle East to make a final gold.
The biggest obstacle facing the renewal of Messi's contract in Paris is that the team has never allowed Messi to see the prospects of the team's development. On the field, the team has never been able to break through the curse of the Champions League quarterfinals; Outside the arena, coach Galtier and sporting adviser Campos who led Lille to the heart of Ligue 1 rule in Paris in 2020/21 have done little in their last year except for keeping Kylian Mbappe for the club last summer.
Combined with the current state of Messi and the team, the most practical way for Paris to renew Messi's contract is to give Messi more permissions, such as allowing Messi to participate in the operation of the management, or giving Messi a certain say in the team's introduction.
But the problem is that this right now belongs exclusively to Kylian Mbappe, and whether the French star will be willing to share it with Messi is unknown.
Since signing that sky-high contract last summer with a clause that "can decide the club signings", "Director Mbape" has become Mbappe's new nickname
But a potential plus for the Paris club is Mbappe's personal attitude.
After losing the first leg at home in February, Mbappe said his future at Parc des Princes was not necessarily linked to the Champions League results, "If I had left my trip to the Champions League instead of showing disrespect to the club, I would have been gone for a long time. I don't think the two-legged game with Bayern will have a big impact, I'm here now and I'm happy. In my opinion, nothing is more important than making the club successful."
Given that Mbappe is not yet in his contract year and recent remarks, there may be some relief within the Paris Club; However, given Mbappe's personality and age, the team's successive premature defeats in the Champions League may also be the trigger for the star to accelerate his departure.
In fact, in addition to Messi and Kylian Mbappe, the club's other top name, Neymar, has also begun to delicate his situation in the team.
Neymar, who has just completed ankle surgery and will miss all of this season's games, has been tied to news of his departure since the winter window. For the Brazilian star, who is over 30 years old, he first came to Paris with the title of third man in the world, but after the arrival of Mbappe and Messi, he even became the third man in the team - the former is the double prince of France and Paris, and the latter is the undisputed GOAT in today's football.
Since joining Paris in 2017, whether it is individual awards or club honours, Neymar has hardly achieved anything, after consecutive years of absence from the Champions League, will Neymar, who is in his golden age as a player, continue to be behind Paris? Similarly, the team's top brass realised that the club had to embark on its own rebuilding effort to recreate a team that had a chance to win the title.
From the perspective of Greater Paris, the 24-year-old Kylian Mbappe is naturally the best choice for the core of the team, and the 31-year-old Neymar may be a target that can be abandoned.
More importantly, also trapped by the economic losses caused by the Champions League exit, for Paris, even if Messi, Neymar and others have a strong willingness to stay in the team, the club is likely to be unable to retain several stars at the same time.
Economic account: potential loss of more than 50 million
First of all, let's calculate how much Paris lost after being blocked from the quarterfinals this season?
Any club that participates in the group stage of the Champions League earns €15.64 million (£13.9 million / $16.4 million). For each win or draw in the group stage, the prize money is €2.8 million and €930,000 respectively.
Paris have won four games and drawn two in the group stage this season, with a prize of around €13 million and a prize of €9.6 million for qualifying for the knockout rounds. As a result, before the start of the two legs against Bayern, the Ligue 1 champions have already credited 38.3 million in prize money through this season's Champions League.
There is no doubt that Paris has a better chance of winning the Champions League this season. According to UEFA's prize distribution rules, the returns in subsequent stages are even more impressive. The club that reaches the quarter-final of the Champions League will receive a promotion prize of 10.6 million euros; If you can further advance to the final four or even the final, the promotion prize will reach 12.5 million euros/15.5 million euros; Finally, the big ear cup will be won, and you will receive an additional 4.5 million euros.
And that's not all. UEFA will award €3.5 million in prize money to teams that qualify for the UEFA Super Cup as winners of the Champions League or Europa League; In the event of a victory, another 1 million euros will be pocketed. If the Club World Cup, in which the champions of all continents compete in the same match, will lose 4.6 million euros. In this way, in the prize money alone, Grand Paris may have lost more than 50 million euros.
Image source: Paris Saint-Germain official website
Does this money really mean a lot to PSG? Probably not.
As we all know, Paris is owned by the Qatar Sports Investment Company (QSI); QSI is a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority, the country's state-run sovereign wealth fund. Behind this capital club is almost the financial power of an entire country.
However, from the perspective of the Fiscal Fair Play Act (FFP), the Champions League prize is still important for Paris. In 2014, the new local tycoon in Ligue 1 paid UEFA a fine of 20 million euros for violating FFP; Last September, UEFA ruled that Paris had failed to comply after reviewing the clubs' financial break-even position for 2018-2022.
Of the eight clubs that failed to pass trial, Paris received the highest amount of fines, totaling 65 million euros. Of this, 10 million euros were required to be paid unconditionally - this money can be credited directly to the UEFA account or deducted from the income from the intercontinental competition in Paris; The other €55 million depends on whether Paris can meet UEFA's financial fairness targets over the next three years.
From this point of view, the amount of Champions League revenue is not the largest amount of PSG's receipt, but this income plays an important role in the team's circumvention of FFP.
According to the statistics of the "Team Newspaper", this season Paris Saint-Germain set the highest annual salary bill in the history of professional football clubs, with an average monthly salary of 1,016,765 euros for first-team players, and the total salary of the whole team reached 728 million euros, accounting for 37% of the total salary of the entire Ligue 1.
While Paris will not be subject to any additional penalties this season, in the face of such a high salary bill, Paris' management will need to find economic leverage as soon as possible to avoid very serious sanctions. If the team is denied the right to participate in future European competitions, it will be a devastating blow for Paris.
Therefore, the tight financial problems also make it difficult for the team to have room to maneuver in the face of the extension of Messi, Ramos, and veterans with huge contracts such as Neymar.
Off-market accounts: The big scene lacks to hit reputation hard
Even if through the sale of players, the loss of Messi and Ramos, Paris Saint-Germain's loss at the economic level is acceptable, so what is the real blow to the club?
The first thing they lose is reputation.
A big-named, star-studded team shouldn't be kept out of the quarter-finals, but that seems to be the norm for Ligue 1 champions. Looking at the history of Champions League participation since entering the era of Qatari capital, Paris have only won tickets to the last four in two seasons, and reached the final only once in 2019/20. The memories of the Ligue 1 giants given by the Champions League are mostly bitter: counting this season, they have fallen to the round of 16 five times in the last seven years.
Even though the presence of Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Messi has raised the club's attention and traffic to new heights, the Paris management still knows that their long-cherished dream at the sporting level can only be fulfilled if they win the highest level of club competitions in Europe. This is also what Middle Eastern financiers most eagerly await after the acquisition of Paris to achieve a major political goal.
Pre-match training
Image source: Paris Saint-Germain official website
As a country the size of just two-thirds of Beijing, Qatar beat the United States to host the World Cup thanks in large part to its political marriage to Paris Saint-Germain.
In 2010, the Qataris bought the stormy PSG in exchange for France's support for its World Cup bid; Since entering the Parc des Princes, Grand Paris has been the political capital of Middle Eastern tycoons to create momentum for the local World Cup.
At the end of last year, at the grand feast set up on the doorstep of Qataris, Grand Paris became a well-deserved big winner at the club level. The team's two top stars, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi, will meet in the final and contribute to the dominant performance; Ashraf made history in Arab and African football for Morocco, meeting his Paris teammates in the final four in the Arab world. From the moment the Lusail decisive game ended, people began to hope that the second half of the season belonging to Paris would also become a classic like the World Cup.
However, when the real big scene came, the Parisian soldiers repeated their previous demeanor. Losing the Champions League will continue to be a nightmare for some time to come, even with the Qatari holding his ninth Ligue 1 title in 11 years at the end of the season more than nothing.
No team in the world has the golden rule to win the Champions League, but for Paris Saint-Germain, a lavish team that has been built so much, it seems that they should not have ended in the first round of the knockout rounds in such a way in terms of salary alone, even if some of the signings were completed on free transfers.
A series of heavy tuition fees, when will this club be able to break from 0 to 1? No one can give a definitive answer.
Original link:
https://theathletic.com/4287284/2023/03/09/sg-champions-league-exit-cost-future/