Manchester City vs Paris Saint-Germain: A Tale of Diverging Sporting Projects

With the success of Manchester City club in winning the European Champions League title, the main goal of the sports project for the Emirati owners has been achieved, about 15 years after the acquisition of the ownership of the club by the wealthy Emirati Sheikh Mansour.

And over the course of 15 years, Emirati owners have spent huge amounts of money on contracts in order to bring in the best names, whether players, coaches or even administrators. The goal was clear to dominate the local stadiums and then extend it to include the continental stadiums, and the Citizens succeeded in achieving the local part of the goal after four years. Only 2012 and I need 15 years to complete the goal.

And while the Emirati money succeeded in embodying the sports project for Manchester City and achieving all its goals, the Qatari money is still unable to lead Paris Saint-Germain towards the main goal of its sports project, which is to win the Champions League title, despite the passage of 12 years since the Qataris acquired ownership of the Parisian, and that year 2011.

The Qatari owners, in turn, spent huge sums of money exceeding one billion euros in order to contract with coaches, players and administrators. The team succeeded locally, but failed continually, and the best result it achieved was reaching the final of the Champions in 2020.

And embodied the success of the Emirati experience with Manchester City, not only after winning the title of champions, but also embodied locally, because the English Premier League is a strong and difficult competition in light of the presence of a significant number of large clubs, and winning the Premier League title seven times is not an easy task. The extension of control to the European stadiums was embodied before reaching the final round in 2021 and before its continental coronation, after it entered the race while it was in the best coronation hall. As for PSG, it is still a candidate team to pass the group stage, and then it disappoints. It is enough that it was a victim of the largest remontada in the history of the competition. European Union in 2017 to make sure of his incapacity.

And a comparison between the Emirati experience with Manchester City and the Qatari experience with Paris Saint-Germain, and the reason for the discrepancy in the results, we stand at a basic fact, which is the balanced contracts and stability at all levels, especially the technical staff. The Spanish coach, Pep Guardiola, has been supervising the team since 2016, while from that year To date, four coaches have supervised the training of Paris Saint-Germain. The fact is that Manchester City took advantage of the contracts to build an integrated team, while the Parisian has players, but it lacks the team.