Paris Saint-Germain Face Steep Climb to Reach Europe's Elite

Talk about petrodollars and “financial doping”—to quote Arsene Wenger way back in 2005, as per the Guardian—all you like, but Paris Saint-Germain’s victory at Montpellier on Saturday night, which clinched their third successive Ligue 1 title, was worth celebrating.

In France, where a sense of sporting history and legend is always considered important, it means something. The three-in-a-row is something that only Marseille, Saint-Etienne and Lyon have managed before. If Laurent Blanc’s team should beat second-tier Auxerre in the Coupe de France final on May 30th, they will complete a domestic treble.

Yet the question going into next season is not so much whether PSG can keep on edging towards Lyon’s record run of seven successive crowns (won between 2002 and 2008, inclusive), but whether they can bridge the gap from Champions League challengers to genuine, sharp-end contenders.

Three successive quarter-final exits in Europe’s premier competition leave Nasser Al-Khelaifi’s club at a crossroads. The gap between last-eight perpetuals and potential winners is an appreciable one to bridge. Lyon’s president Jean-Michel Aulas could tell Al-Khelaifi plenty about that.

His club floated on the stock market in February 2007, raising an initial €90 million. The plan of importing expensive talent like Abdulkader Keita, Ederson, Michel Bastos and lastly Yoann Gourcuff was a spectacular flop, and Lyon fell from their perch. Their attractive young side that finished runners-up this season is largely furnished with academy products, but that is a policy that has been mainly forced by financial imperative after those costly mistakes.

The comparison ends there. PSG aren’t going to go broke under their Qatari ownership, but they need to exhibit some of the financial smarts that Aulas and Lyon were unable to when trying to build to the very top before.

Financial Fair Play (FFP) means that one can’t say that ambition is the only limit to PSG’s dreams. Under UEFA-imposed restrictions, the club has €55 million (net) available to spend this summer. Blanc doesn’t need a big influx of players, but rather one or two real cornerstones to lift his group that little bit higher.

It’ll be hard. The preferred choice would be Paul Pogba of Juventus—a game changer with plenty of miles left on the clock and, importantly from a global marketing perspective, a young French superstar whose profile is climbing exponentially. Yet just a cursory look at the figures tell you that PSG will have to buy to sell, if we take AS’ line that Juventus will require €100 million to let their star go (if indeed they will agree to do so at all).

Claude Paris/Associated Press

The real problem is how to create that space. Ezequiel Lavezzi, who scored the clinching goal at Montpellier on Saturday, is a prime candidate to be shifted out with just a year left on his deal. However Italian suitors, including Inter and his former club Napoli, would struggle with his €4 million net annual salary, so recouping a fee as well would be a task.

Al-Khelaifi will hope to move on Yohan Cabaye too, but might struggle to get back the €23 million estimated fee that was outlaid for him in January 2014, as reported by L’Equipe (via ESPN FC). The club have intimated that they would like to hold on to Edinson Cavani, particularly with Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s contract expiring in 2016, but he is one of their few assets of substantial saleable value, so might have to be sacrificed.

With Blanc looking like he will continue at the helm, observers will expect to see a greater tactical adroitness than at certain points this season, even though vanquishing Chelsea in the Champions League last 16 was a good sign of progress. The coach’s job will evolve, with Ibrahimovic and Thiago Motta affected by injury for much of this season, making PSG pedestrian and needing to consider a change in impetus for the future.

There is plenty for PSG to be proud of. As Sunday’s edition of L’Equipe noted, who would have thought four years ago that winning the Champions League would be something a French club could realistically aspire to? The hardest step, however, is yet to come.