Inside the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, there was a television camera trained on the Paris Saint-Germain delegation, waiting for a reaction.
They disappointed. The club’s president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, seemed to have noticed a ghost. The sports director Luis Campos too, sitting next to him.
Al-Khelaifi, one of the biggest enthusiastic supporters of the new Champions League format: more clashes between the biggest clubs, more competition, more excitement, promised. But judging by his look of surprise in the league’s first draw last August, facing Manchester City, Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid and others in his 8 matches was not what he had in mind.
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He then showed courage, continually telling reporters how “incredible” this season’s festival will be and how, although he felt PSG had the “toughest draw” of the 36 participating clubs, he was excited about the challenge ahead.
Five months later, PSG are languishing in 26th place in the Champions League standings, facing a battle even to scrape into next month’s play-off round to see who fills out the last 16 after winning just two of their first six matches. Al-Khelaifi’s initial look of horror has begun to look justified.
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But PSG is not in this area. The last two European champions, Real Madrid and Manchester City, occupy 22nd and 24th places respectively. And while Madrid are expected to progress, with games against Red Bull Salzburg and Brest to complete the league phase, PSG’s meeting with City at the Parc des Princes tonight is fraught with a rare type of danger. this level of the championship. Champions League.
Such heavyweight competitions have been a welcome feature of this season’s competition, with no rating formula the championship phase. But so far, they have got felt relatively at ease – glamorous, high-profile events with relatively little risk, just the way big-club homeowners like them.
This will be the seventh meeting between PSG and City since they were acquired through Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, vice-president of the United Arab Emirates, respectively in 2011 and 2008. The rewards were greater when they met in the Champions League quarter-finals in 2016 and in the semi-finals 4 years ago, with City winning both games. This time, the rewards are more than offset by the potential consequences of a loss.
Defending champions PSG have nine clear points at the top of Ligue 1 and are unbeaten in their 18 games in the French top flight this season, but their Qatari owners have never been satisfied with domestic success. On the sporting front, PSG’s task is judged almost entirely by its functionality in the Champions League, a festival that Al-Khelaifi first spoke of as having to be won until 2016, then until 2018. . . That is a purpose, despite all the encouraging steps taken. Over the past 18 months, under the last head coach, Luis Enrique, he has rarely felt more remote than he does today.
PSG’s chief profits officer, Marc Armstrong, told the BBC last season that, contrary to some statements by Al-Khelaifi in the past, the Champions League is “not an obsession” for them. “Would we like to win it? Yes,” he said, but added: “You don’t need to win the Champions League to be a successful club. “
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And City, despite everything, did it in 2023 following a transparent view of football rather than a bad obsession with “the Champions League or bankruptcy”. But for PSG, trusting the procedure proved almost impossible. Ligue 1’s supremacy is taken for granted (which (not to say it was a given), so marginal defeats at European level have sometimes seemed catastrophic.
There is, though, a misconception in imagining that the legitimacy of the entire Qatari project at PSG (and likewise the Abu Dhabi project at City) hinges on Champions League success. It doesn’t. PSG and City are trophy assets, whose acquisitions can be seen to reflect the wider diplomatic, economic and strategic relationships between France and Qatar, and the UK and UAE. In that respect, PSG and City have already fulfilled their purpose.
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The last time the two clubs met in the Champions League, in the 2021-22 stage of the tournament, diplomatic relations between the two Gulf countries were recently restored following the diplomatic crisis in Qatar. Ties have especially improved since then, with greater cooperation in economic matters. as well as the conflict between Israel and Gaza.
Earlier this week, a Qatari government detailed talks between Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, its prime minister, and UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan (the brother Sheikh Mansour’s minor), discussing “the latest developments in Gaza. ” and the occupied Palestinian territories, specifically in light of the ceasefire agreement and the exchange of detainees and prisoners. “
Although PSG and City have flagships from Qatar and Abu Dhabi respectively, they are also only small portions of a much larger whole, while the global influence of the Gulf region – and the dependence of Europe’s monetary position on it – continues to grow.
The relationship between PSG and City is real, however.
While the two clubs had a common grievance with UEFA, European football’s governing body, over the implementation and enforcement of financial fair play (FFP) regulations, Al-Khelaifi has sat on UEFA’s executive committee since 2019 and been chairman of the European Club Association (ECA) since April 2021, capitalising on his opposition that spring to the failed European Super League project, to which City and five other Premier League clubs had signed up. City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano was elected to the ECA board in 2023, having missed out two years earlier.
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On the pitch, it is a different matter. The tables have turned since 2016, when, the day before the first leg of that quarter-final at Paris’ Parc des Princes, PSG’s then head coach Laurent Blanc suggested, “Maybe in Europe, they (City) are a bit behind us.” It looked that way for a time, but that 3-2 aggregate defeat spelt the end for Blanc that summer.
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PSG reached the Champions League final in 2020 and the semi-finals the following year and last season, but after the departure of many of the team’s big stars, adding Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian MbappeArray, we are talking about a new assignment under Campos and Luis Enrique, an assignment that has a longer-term perspective. PSG have been successful, but the kind of continuity City have enjoyed under Pep Guardiola over the past nine years – despite the turbulence of recent months – has so far been elusive.
At Tuesday’s pre-fit press conference, PSG striker Ousmane Dembélé called it the biggest adjustment since his €50m (£42. 3m/£52. 1m) transfer. (millions of dollars at current exchange rates) from Barcelona in the summer of 2023. “We know we have to stay alive,” he said, aware that even if they beat City, they would possibly still have to achieve a result in Stuttgart in Germany the next time. on Wednesday to secure a spot in February’s home-and-away play-offs.
“This is a very peculiar match because of the format of the competition,” Luis Enrique said. “It (would have been) hard to imagine that Manchester City and PSG would have (only) this many points after six games.”
That would be the case, and it remains to be noted that all of this illustrates the strength of the format, the random nature of the matches or simply the localised difficulties that both clubs have encountered this season.
Whatever the answer, tonight’s showdown in Paris – “a final,” as Guardiola calls it – is the kind of event the Champions League needs.
It can’t just be about big clubs and big groups playing each other more frequently. There has to be something at stake, something riding on it, a sense of excitement and drama. It has to be that those elite groups are significantly underperforming, but so far in this festival PSG and City have done it, which is why, rather than being a dead game, the Parc des Princes will host a dogfight.
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(Top photos: Al-Khelaifi, left, and Sheikh Mansour; Getty Images)