PSG Needs a Strong Identity Before Taking Any Radical Decisions
PSG Needs a Strong Identity Before Taking Any Radical Decisions
After a decade of QSI ownership, what kind of club should Paris Saint-Germain try to be?
Paris Saint-Germain finds itself at another crossroads heading into this summer with a new head coach required and no signs of a clear identity from top to bottom in sight. The French champions will likely defend their Ligue 1 title after recent wins over OGC Nice and RC Lens put them on the home stretch, but that is of little consolation in the French capital.
This season has been another abject failure in both the UEFA Champions League and even the Coupe de France, with PSG far from being the juggernaut that they are made out to be. Mauricio Pochettino could not build upon Thomas Tuchel’s relative success, and things have unraveled further since Christophe Galtier arrived at Parc des Princes.
Les Parisiens are arguably one of the world’s leading clubs, but those claims to elite status are rooted almost exclusively in off-field business prowess and a penchant for celebrity drama. If PSG are considered elite these days, they are the club with the weakest identity when looked at alongside the likes of serial Champions League winners Real Madrid.
Manchester City are the closest thing to the French capital outfit in terms of their ownership and the fact that they are a modern soccer superpower. However, the Premier League titleholders are infinitely more credible on the field than PSG are right now, and the only thing that can possibly change this moving forward is a clear identity.
Soccer has a finite number of historically established institutional powers which remain important names in the game despite occasional periods of an extended decline. The likes of Manchester United and AC Milan have known longer recent struggles than the likes of Real, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Barcelona, and Juventus, but all remain names of repute.
Despite the number of trophies won under Qatari ownership, PSG does not have the institutional qualities that these other names all possess, and some will argue that they never ever will. Perhaps they are right about that, as evidenced by a short-lived attempt to turn the Paris club into something similar to Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, or Juventus under Carlo Ancelotti.
A locker room boasting great champions such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Motta, and Maxwell set PSG up for a shot at earning that status over time, but it has slipped through their fingers. Ligue 1’s flagship club has been drifting for years now and is so far from garnering the sort of respect needed to become a true continental elite that it is arguably no longer worth pursuing such status.
Instead, PSG now needs to embrace what it is and has always been since the beginning of Qatar’s ownership back in 2011, which is a modern club. City, RB Leipzig, and Arsenal are some of the best current examples of clubs capable of challenging the historically established elite by going about it in different ways.
City Football Group (CFG) and Red Bull are two of the most impressive multi-club network systems in world soccer, with Manchester City and RB Leipzig sitting atop their respective trees. There are other impressive examples across Europe, but few can compete at the continental level like these two.
Arsenal are a bit different in that they built a strong identity for years under the individual leadership of Arsene Wenger, which enabled them to challenge United and, to a lesser extent Liverpool. The Gunners of today are recasting themselves in a modern light, out of Wenger’s shadow but very much true to some of the legendary Frenchman’s core beliefs.
There was a reason why PSG’s Qatar owners were so keen to bring Wenger aboard at various times during their tenure because he singlehandedly masterminded Arsenal’s Premier League rise. Without his work and later sacrifice, the London giants would probably not be the globally popular club they are today.
Not only was Ancelotti’s time in Paris largely a failure because he was not given the time to put the necessary building blocks in place, the legacy of those early few years was wasted too. The reason why Laurent Blanc remains the most successful head coach of PSG’s Qatari era was the strength of the squad that he inherited from the elite Italian tactician.
No French club has ever been as utterly dominant domestically as that 2013-16 spell, which saw Les Rouge et Bleu completing back-to-back domestic clean sweeps. PSG can only boast that once since the 2019-20 season under Thomas Tuchel, which was impacted by COVID-19 and also saw a Champions League final appearance.
The lack of an institutional force in French soccer is not only a Parisien failure, it also concerns Olympique de Marseille, Olympique Lyonnais, and historical fallen giants AS Saint-Etienne. However, PSG are well and truly the dominant force of the French game today, yet are one of the most underwhelming versions of itself in over 10 years of Qatari ownership.
Given Qatar Sports Investments’ recently acquired 21.67% stake in SC Braga in Portugal and potential Qatari involvement in a proposed takeover of United, things could be about to change. It appears that QSI are finally starting to recognize that following the CFG and Red Bull blueprint, notably City, given that Leipzig still sells their best players, might be the best path to success.
AS Monaco is probably the closest equivalent to Leizpig that France has, so it is no surprise that their activity has been overseen by ex-Red Bull chief Paul Mitchell these past few years. Simply mirroring Les Monegasques is not what PSG and QSI aspire to, though, so City is the most likely example that we can expect the French giants to attempt to replicate.
The Emirati-owned club are not universally liked and never will be, but they are more dominant in English soccer than PSG have been in France of late, and Champions League success could follow. For the Ligue 1 powerhouse to remain on a similar level to City, QSI needs to set out a clear and defined strategy for the future and start working towards it.
Failure to do so will result in PSG being left behind by its continental rivals and the dominant domestic force simply by default. Combining modern strategy with traditional powerhouse elements, such as Bayern’s dominance of the German transfer market, could be the way to forge a strong new identity in Paris.