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PSG is one of those teams that makes sense of the phrase “I hate modern football”: full of stars, without apparently much history and with a huge economic contingent. An organization that, without having to do accounts, was in all the pools to take Leo Messi after the Argentine forward sent the burofax to Barcelona that chaotic afternoon in August. Led by Neymar and Mbappé, the French team is today one of the clear candidates to win the Champions League, a competition that it seeks with obsession, and that last year made its first step to reach it one day by losing the final against Bayern from Munich. They also have one of the most demanding benches in Europe, which fired its last occupant, the German Thomas Tuchel, on December 23 and apparently after several disagreements with the team’s technical director, the Brazilian soccer legend Leonardo. Mauricio Pochettino arrives to replace him, the last bet of the Parisians for a position that has had five technicians in the last nine years.
2011 was surely the year that PSG’s fate changed, at which point the Qatari investment fund Qatar Investment Authority bought the 70% of team shares for 50 million euros. The group was reinforced for the following season with some leading names, such as Javier Pastore (a player who cost 40 million, almost as much as the club), Thiago Motta, Blaise Matuidi. Antoine Kombouaré, who had started the campaign as coach, was fired on January 1, 2012, at which point Carlo Ancelotti arrived, a coach with a great poster after his time at AC Milan and surely more in line with the ambitions of the new rich man from the European football. Since then, everything has been speed, on the grass and on the benches.
The PSG leaders have tried everything, since after Ancelotti, in 2013, came Laurent Blanc and his stick, who with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva dominating the areas managed to build a competitive and abusive team in the league, but who was cut down in the eighth of Champions on several occasions while he began to build his enmity with Barcelona, the executioner in one of those clashes. As a result of the need to stand out in Europe, the club opted in 2016 for the one who at that time was the greatest specialist in continental qualifying rounds, the Basque Unai Emery, who had won three Europa Leagues consecutive with Sevilla. But football, destroying theory, gave the coach and the club one of the most humiliating comebacks in the history of sport, the now mythical 6-1 that the French received against Barcelona on March 8, 2017, again in the second round final. The Spanish was given a wild card, because that summer the team spent 222 million euros on Neymar and postponed another bombastic purchase thanks to an assignment to avoid the “fair play”, that of Kylian Mbappé, for which he would end up paying another 180. Two great players who, on the other hand, did not prevent Emery from being fired after the team was eliminated in the Champions League, again in the second round, this time by Real Madrid.
Thomas Tuchel, who arrived in Paris in the 18-19 season from Borussia Dortmund, had the poster of innovation, of fashion, belonging to that new school, that of pressure and that of going and back, the German in short, so on the rise in recent times and praised by Jürgen Klopp and his Liverpool, by Julian Nagelsmann and his Leipzig and, ultimately and surprisingly, by the “interim” Hans-Dieter Flick and his Bavarian steamroller . “There was tension,” explained Zsolt Löw, Tuchel’s assistant coach at PSG after his departure from the club, while explaining the German who had the confidence of President Al-Kkelafi, those penetrating eyes that have so often expressed disappointment from the stands, but not with Leonardo’s, who He is living his second stage as the head of the organization, this time and according to Löw, with maximum sports powers.
It seems, then, that Pochettino’s new mission to settle in a stable way in Paris is the Champions League, almost nothing. PSG has won seven of the last eight leagues, an infinity of cups, has spent more than a billion, all for a dream exposed as an obligation. For example, Barcelona, founded in 1898, did not win its first European Cup until almost 100 years later, with Koeman’s free kick in 92 at Wembley. Raising the “orejona” would also be a balm for the squad, because Neymar, almost since his arrival, and Mbappé flirt with countless teams in each market, because something there convinces them. For such an arduous task, Pochettino has even taken his son Sebastiano as a physical trainer. “Stop fooling around,” the coach blurted out a few days after his arrival.
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