Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) has officially conveyed its desire to find a place in the Île-de-France region (which includes Paris and its surroundings) to build a new stadium and abandon the Parc des Princes, too small for the club, due to its disagreements with the capital’s City Council.
As reported by the newspaper Le Parisien, close to PSG, an email sent by the club to the Île-de-France authorities on March 11 confirms the will of the entity controlled by a Qatari sovereign fund to prioritize the path of building a new sports venue in a perimeter 20 kilometers from the city.
The message, according to the same source, is signed by the general secretary of PSG, Victoriano Melero, and is addressed to the commission in charge of the strategic development plans and environmental planning of the region until 2040.
According to the French press, this step makes official the divorce between PSG and the municipality of Paris.
Already in February, Île-de-France authorities had publicly shown their intention to help PSG find a new home and among the possible destinations for a future stadium, places such as Hauts-de-Seine, Yvelines, Essone and Val d’Oise were being considered. , located west of the capital.
The Qatari ownership of PSG initially tried to buy the Parc des Princes from the Paris City Council, with the aim of expanding its capacity, which with 48,600 seats falls short of the large European clubs.
But the City Council, governed by a coalition of leftist and environmental groups and headed by socialist Anne Hidalgo, opposed the sale to maintain the city’s heritage.
“I say it again today and once and for all: there will be no sale of the Parc des Princes,” Hidalgo stressed at the beginning of this year in an interview with the newspaper Ouest France.
The mayor also expressed her anger over some “outrageous” statements by PSG president Nasser al Khelaifi last year in which he suggested that the city did not want to sell them the stadium because its Qatari owners are “Arabs.”
Days later, the municipal council voted against that sale and Al Khelaifi flatly assured that they would abandon the stadium: “It’s over. “We are going to leave the Parc des Princes.”
The clashes between both parties go back more than a year. In addition to Al Khelaifi’s accusations, Hidalgo considered the offer of 28 million that the club would have made to take over the stadium “ridiculous.”
Finding an alternative to the Parc des Princes, however, is not easy, as PSG and Île-de-France must find enough space to build a venue with at least 60,000 seats, with public transport and parking spaces in a region, that of Paris, with one of the highest population densities in Europe (12.3 million inhabitants).
In any case, a possible move will not be quick. Both parties are united by an emphyteusis rental, which means a long-term, low-rent contract in exchange for the tenant making improvements to the rented property.
In the case of the Parc des Princes, the contract is for thirty years, until the end of 2043, and PSG has made improvements worth around 85 million euros since the signing of the commitment in 2013. EFE
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