By Jamie Barton, CNN
(CNN) — As Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting tapped the ball into the Paris Saint-Germain net on March 8, 2023, the irony was not lost on the French fans.
Choupo-Moting, a relatively unremarkable but selfless player, had been released by PSG for free in 2020. And here he was, scoring the second of three goals for Bayern Munich that would knock Les Parisiens out of the Champions League at the Round of 16 stage. His teammate Kingsley Coman, who had also left PSG for free, had scored the first.
The French superclub’s frontline of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé was, on paper, miles ahead of the one belonging to its German opponent. And yet, in three hours and 13 minutes across two matches, the star trio had failed to score a single goal. The team from the City of Light had once again burned out in the competition it had been trying desperately to win for years.
“The season for us was kind of like a nightmare,” PSG fan Raphaël Messina tells CNN Sports. “We wanted to fall in love again with our club, and for players to respect the badge and the institution.”
The French club, and its Qatari ownership, had become known as much for its big spending and superstar talent as it had for anything happening on the pitch.
“I think money was one of the first conditions for them (the players) to come and sign for PSG, for sure,” explains Messina.
“It’s hard to blame them because it’s the way the president (of the club, Nasser Al-Khelaifi) or other people around them sell the experience of being in Paris and PSG. … It’s an incredible city. If you have the money, you can have a lot of fun.”
That fun, unfortunately, had not spread to the majority of the club’s fans. The team’s only previous Champions League final appearance came in 2020 behind closed doors due to the Covid pandemic, when it lost 1-0 to Bayern Munich.
The goalscorer that night? Kingsley Coman.
But – with Les Parisiens gearing up to take on Inter Milan in the Champions League final on Saturday night – it’s safe to say they’re having fun now.
No ‘I’ in team
Salvation came four months after that low point in Bavaria in the form of a man who, up until that point, was widely disliked in Paris.
Luis Enrique had been the manager of Barcelona in 2017 when the Catalan team had made Champions League history by coming back from 4-0 to beat PSG 6-5 on aggregate, one of the greatest games – and one of the worst humiliations – in the competition’s history.
“We had kind of a bad memory of this man,” admits PSG fan Hugo Coll in an interview with CNN Sports.
Nonetheless, the likes of Coll and Messina – members of PSG’s London supporters’ club – were willing to put their trust in Enrique, provided the club’s ownership did so too.
“We were happy with the big name, with Enrique, but we really wanted the club to give him full power and give him time to do what he wanted,” explains Coll, who had seen four managers fired in just over five years.
Less than six weeks after his appointment, Enrique was already imprinting his philosophies on the club. With Messi and Sergio Ramos already having left to join Inter Miami and Sevilla, respectively, Neymar was sold to Saudi Arabia’s Al-Hilal.
A year later, after a promising season in the Champions League was cut short by Borussia Dortmund in the semifinals, the club’s one remaining superstar, Mbappé, left to join Real Madrid.
Enrique insisted that the team would get better in the French striker’s absence. Many scoffed at the suggestion that losing Ligue 1’s top goalscorer in each of the previous six seasons could improve the team. But some saw it as a sign that the club might finally achieve some stability.
“As soon as we realized he was getting rid of the Neymars, the Messis, the Mbappés – and there were a couple of actions he did where, for example, he put (Ousmane) Dembélé on the bench after bad behavior – we were like, ‘Finally, there is a coach who can do what he wants,’” says Coll.
Enrique has been proven right. Mbappé’s 27 league goals last season have been replaced by three players who were already at the club – Dembélé, Bradley Barcola and Gonçalo Ramos, who have 21, 14 and 10, respectively.
Add to them the wizardry of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and the quick feet of Désiré Doué, and there is the sense that, for the first time in a long time, PSG is not reliant on a very small number of superstar players who may have felt they were bigger than the club.
In fact, with one of the lowest average ages in the whole of the Champions League, Paris Saint-Germain this season has become a team known for its young, hardworking and likeable core group of players – Vitinha, Nuno Mendes, João Neves, Barcola and Doué have all garnered plaudits.
“The thing that changes from the past is (now) I think of a team, I don’t think of a player,” says Coll. “It’s a team that we’ve grown to love.”
“That’s why I love and we love PSG this season,” agrees Messina. “Because it reminds us a little bit of … not the old football but, you know, a big collective. They want to fight for the jersey.”
Changing priorities
The elephant in the room with PSG, of course, is its ownership. The club is owned by Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), an investment fund backed by the Qatari government.
Over the last three decades, Qatar has built its visibility and profile in the West through a number of sporting ventures, including the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the Qatar Tennis Open and the purchase of PSG in 2011. Critics have condemned QSI’s actions as nothing more than an attempt to “sportswash” the nation’s poor human rights record.
Al-Khelaifi has repeatedly rejected such accusations and said that QSI operates simply to make money from its investments.
“We are an investment fund. We bought the club for €70 million. We have since received offers in the multi-billions,” he told BBC Sport in 2022. “This is the brand we built as a real investment – across men’s and women’s teams. People criticize because it is sovereign wealth.
“What about other forms of ownership – is the private equity takeover of sport about social good? What about clubs leveraged to the sky by private individuals – is that good? Barcelona is a fan-owned club with €1.5 billion debt – does that work?”
In that sense, despite not achieving Al-Khelaifi’s stated aim of winning the Champions League within five seasons of the takeover, can it really be said that QSI’s project with PSG has failed?
“They definitely achieved their objective of building a brand,” says Coll. “PSG 15 years ago and PSG now is completely different. I think they’ve been very successful in this marketing aspect. I see people in the street wearing PSG clothes and they don’t really care about the club, it’s just what they like to wear. People know PSG all around the world.
“The sporting aspect of recruiting Messi, for example, I don’t think was the right one,” he adds. “But to think that Messi played for PSG, it just gives you something else.”
Nonetheless, there is the sense that this phase of the project has run its course, that PSG is not going to get any more famous. What the club needs now is to be liked – not just by fans like Coll and Messina who have finally found a group of players they can get behind, but by those in the wider soccer sphere.
One way the club has begun to achieve that, according to French soccer expert Jonathan Johnson, is by finally starting to lean more on its French contingent.
“Certainly, for other fan bases in France, they’re a bit more likeable,” he told CNN Sports. “I think the fact that the team is starting to be composed of quite a high number of domestic talents – which isn’t something that’s always been the case under the Qatari ownership – I think that’s something that helps their popularity a little bit within France.”
With French soccer already in financial turmoil and facing another potential crisis after talks over a Ligue 1 TV rights deal broke down again in April, even some fans of PSG’s bitter rival Olympique de Marseille (OM) have gotten behind Les Parisiens.
“Obviously, Marseille fans are not going to become PSG supporters overnight,” says Johnson. “But fairly prominent and high-profile OM supporters have issued their public support of PSG, wanting to see PSG succeed (in the Champions League) for the best for the young (players) and French football.”
But admiration and respect from fans of other French teams is only ever going to be begrudging at most. How can the club improve its image around the world, where international fans are less concerned with local rivalries?
Well, the thing about soccer, which is perhaps one of the reasons it has proven so attractive to nation states trying to exert soft power, is that there is one surefire way to improve your reputation: win.
Crunch time
Winning is so important, says Johnson, that PSG’s improved image could be under threat should it lose in Munich.
“It’s a critical juncture in terms of these changing attitudes towards PSG because I think if PSG do manage to succeed then I think that change of perception is more likely to remain than should PSG fall short against Inter,” he explains.
Should PSG win, though, this young team would go down in history as the first ever to bring the Champions League to Paris, and only the second to bring it to France, following Marseille’s triumph in 1993.
“I’m pretty confident in the team and I will dare to dream that we can win this trophy,” says Messina. “Me and Hugo, we’ve seen a lot, we’ve cried a lot, we’ve enjoyed a lot. And now we can potentially celebrate something together.”
If PSG is to make history and beat Inter on Saturday, the transformation from spoiled superstars to a likeable collective will have an ending that the club’s ownership has been dreaming of, and there will likely be even more fans joining Coll and Messina next season.
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