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- [00:00]
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- [01:49]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
The Athletic FC Podcast Network.
- [01:55]
Adam Leventhal
Welcome to the Athletic FC Podcast. I'm Adam Levental. So Paris St. Germain have finally got their hands on the Champions League trophy, the full time whist. Well, it's history for Paris Saint Germain and finally they will get to hold the trophy that's become their holy grail. So how did they do it and are they set to dominate European football? The athletics. Adam Crafton and James Horncastle are with me to start off with Liam Tharm, our tactics writer is coming up a little bit later on. So Paris Saint Germain beat into 5 Nil Hakimi 2 for Douay, Kvadatskhelia and Mayulu with the goals. Now, James, you were at the Allianz arena in Munich. Have you managed to get your head around exactly what you saw?
- [02:47]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
Yes. I mean, I saw this very young PSG team show up and play to, I think, the peak of their powers, which you can't take for granted in finals. Inter also played beneath themselves and it was interesting listening to Luis Enrique afterwards because he said a lot of his work during the week was not tactical, even though he got all of that spot on. It was managing the emotions of this group of players, many of whom are new to finals. It's not like when PSG last reached a final in Covid, when you had Neymar as well, who played in Champions League finals with Luis Enrique or Mbappe, who'd won a World Cup. It was a relatively new group and yet they delivered what LinkedIn would call high performance. And it was a devastating display to watch one of the best displays I've seen in person ever. And also deeply troubling to watch a very, very good Inter team completely discombobulate.
- [03:46]
Adam Leventhal
And what has the reaction been in general in Italy to Inter's demise? Because I know you said that they underperformed, but it almost verged on them, which is so unlike them, freezing against such a vibrant side like that.
- [04:00]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
Alessandro Del Piero, who was, you know, an analyst for CBS and Sky Italia, you know, he was asked pitch side by Peter Schmeichel, would all of Italy be behind Inter going into that final? And he was like, absolutely not. No way. You know, their rivals Juventus and Milan, to use a German word, if there were any of those fans in Munich, what they were feeling was schadenfreude at that moment. Deep and delightful schadenfreude at Inter's demise because Inter have made both of those teams look bad in recent years. Inter basically took the Juventus model to start a winning cycle, which was hire Antonio Conte and get their president, Bepe Marotta. Marotta left Juventus after they signed Ronaldo. There was a kind of sense that he was a dissenting voice for that signing. And ultimately it feels that he was proven right. With Milan, for example, Milan coming off a really bad season where mid table lost Coppa Italia final. Ifinta had won the Champions League and had been on an open top bus parade, it would have compounded their misery. Instead, it gave their fans the chance to kind of go and get some bed linen, spray paint some insults on it and basically hang them outside San Siro. But I think for the rest of Italy, and particularly the kind of interesti, there was this feeling it was a Real shame, because Italy wants the credibility that comes from a team winning the Champions League. They've certainly got some credibility back by Roma winning the Conference League, Atlanta winning the Europa League. This was the kind of final missing piece to be able to say Serie A is a credible league again, or maybe the second power behind the Premier League. And instead, you know, when people talk about this interteam, casual fans will say, ah, yeah, the team that lost five nil in a Champions League final, people will say, the boys have got blown away by those young lads at psg, the elderly interplayers, all the myths that have been busted by kind of interview the performance and the night on the biggest stage of all, when everyone is watching, kind of almost re emphasized stereotypes which are, in my opinion, should have been kind of thrown away, but all came to the fore that night.
- [06:07]
Adam Leventhal
There's various subplots that we're going to be reflecting on in this episode, but I just wanted to get your thoughts. James, having been in the. In the stadium, the support that was shown to Louis Enrique by the Paris Saint Germain fans with that tifo that they unfurled depicting him with his daughter Jana, who, for people who don't know, she died of cancer in, in 2019. She was only 9 years old. Can you encapsulate the emotion that was there attached to that element of the story?
- [06:35]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
Yeah. Also seeing Luis Enrique's wife and his other children celebrate with him on the pitch, that was not only very sweet. The Paris Saint Germain ultras, I mean, they really did bring the noise. People have been talking about that since the semi finals against Arsenal and the buzz at the Par des Prince. But it did feel, being in the city, that there were a lot fewer PSG fans than Inter fans. And then you got into the stadium and for me and other journalists to get into the stadium, security checks, you know, basically show your pass. No, you can't go that way, sir. And then as soon as the psg, as soon as PSG scored, the Ultras had managed to smuggle tens and tens and tens of flares as well as their choreography choreographies in. Into the. Into the ground as well, because there was one before the game and then there was the final one for Luis Enrique and Zanna. There wasn't the only kind of possibility to emote and feel empathy towards Luis Enrique, who was brilliant. After the game again on Sky Italia, he reduced Sky Italia's presenter, who's pregnant, to tears with his answer because he said, zanna's not only with me in spirit, when we win, she's there for me more even when we lose. I feel her presence more then. And, yeah, the humanity of Luis Enrique was definitely one of the stories of the night, along with this kind of youthfulness and the kind of future that people are projecting on psg, whilst there is still that conflict going on between how this project is assembled and financed, which I'm sure Crafto will go into.
- [08:16]
Paige
James, do you think Luis Enrique, I mean, beyond the element we've just spoken about, do you think he's also more likable for being. He's not someone who walks into a press conference and wants the world to know what his philosophy is, the way that he's going to play. He doesn't. You know, people don't talk about his style of play in the way that they do about a Guardiola or a Rangnick or someone like that. But he clearly does have a very defined style of play. At the same time, do you think that makes him more likable and less annoying to the average person as a result of that?
- [08:51]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
You know, I tend to think with him because his first treble came, you know, relatively soon after Guardiola's treble at Barcelona. Some of that success was still attributed to Guardiola and the club and having Messi, even though we've seen subsequently that Barcelona have struggled to repeat in the Champions League. On the different coaches, he can be quite combative in press conferences, Luis Enrique were, you know, he's called out reporters and reporters don't like that. But I do think he must say, reduced the game. When he talks about the game, it is about individual commitment. It's less about jargon and all this sort of thing. It's like, look at what you have to do here. That documentary clip of him basically being in Mbappe's face during a video analysis session, saying, if you can't score, then you have to. You have to defend. You have to help the team by pressing. Not talking about that in very technical jargon, but saying, this is what made Michael Jordan great, the fact that all of his opponents basically hated him because he was in their face all the time, hustling and harassing them. That's what I want from you. And that footage of Usman Dembele kind of staring down Jan Sommer, doing everything that Luis Enrique had asked of Kylian Mbappe was really powerful. And again, after the game, he said Ousmane Dembele should win the Ballon d' or for his defensive performance tonight. That's just being able to relate to people on a human level, it's getting them to raise their performance by pushing motivational buttons with, you know, only one or two kind of tactical instructions rather than just overloading them with jargon. There was a lot of humanity in performance of the PSG players and the coach and that's I suppose led to a lot of people losing sight to how it's still a Qatari project. It's still a. Yeah, all of these young fresh players were still acquired at huge expense. I mean 50 million for due is nearly twice as much as the most expensive interplayer in terms of the Qatari.
- [10:56]
Adam Leventhal
Backed element to this. Adam, what was your feeling watching it rather than the, you know, the emotional side that captured a lot of people's imagination? Were you looking at it through a different lens?
- [11:09]
Paige
Not really in the sense of.
- [11:10]
Liam Tharm
Is it.
- [11:11]
Paige
It's not so different to when Man City win the league a few years ago when Newcastle won a cup and we were all very excited a few months ago. We are past the point where football is going to turn itself upside down and not allow these investment vehicles, if you like, of state entities to run football clubs. So what you tend to see at these moments where one of these team win is this kind of, you know, you get on the one hand an incredible performance, an incredible moment for fans who haven't won X thing for such a long time. I mean poor PSG fans, They've only won 25 French leagues over the last 10 years. Right. But other, other than that, you know, you get this situation where PSG fans haven't won for ages, where Newcastle fans haven't won for ages, where there's some amazing coach or player stories, whether that's Eddie Howe, whether it's Luis Enrique, whether it's Dan Byrne or whether it's Ousmane Dembele. And often there'll be incredible stories within all of which of course you're going to be happy for those people and happy for that. And also you can also say the way that the Saudi PAF have run Newcastle has been really impressive relative to what people thought it was going to be when they came in, relative to what the QSI did at PSG for the first few years or so. I think what they've done post World cup has also been really impressive in terms of the players they've recruited. The way that they stuck by Luis Enrique, actually last autumn when I think. I think Real Madrid probably would have sacked him, to be honest, when they'd lost a couple of games early in the season, it had Been a year already, but they had this clear project. But what you then get is when you get these big highs, I think what you see is journalists who have this kind of natural feeling of we need to cover all these good stories, but then you have to say, oh, but what about this thing? And you have to kind of box that off. And that's basically what we're doing now, right? We're boxing off that difficult, more complicated bit of the story and people will have feelings either way on it. Some people will say countries shouldn't really be able to own and run football clubs because it disproportionately imbalances the finances of football. That's what we've seen from PSG over the past 10, 15 years or so. The deal they did for Neymar had a huge hyper inflationary impact on the transfer market. What I don't think it's fair to blame them on is the way that Barcelona then went and blew all that money and plunged themselves into financial crisis. So you have that kind of imbalancing impact that some of these teams have been able to have, whether that's PSG or City. It's not been the case with Newcastle because of the financial fair play rules that have come in. But what we are getting towards if the Manchester City case ever, ever, ever concludes is this crunch moment in football where if Manchester City win or even lose, not so badly. I think you do find the kind of the fabric of financial fair play coming under huge question. And the other thing that PSG have been able to do is in a way that I think a lot of other teams wouldn't be able to do just because of the resource at their disposal and is fail and restart so many times. You know, a lot of teams, I think had they spent what PSG had spent cycle after cycle, they would be having to sell and rebuild, sell and rebuild in a much more humble way. The only comparison I can really make is probably Man United, you know, who have been able to throw bad money after bad money after bad money.
- [14:45]
Adam Leventhal
One question before we let James go off. I just wanted to ask you about where Inter go now and what happens with Simone Inzaghi, who was, I think for a lot of neutrals, they will have enjoyed his performance on the touchline, just simply for its, its graphic nature, even though he was going through his own, his own turmoil.
- [15:10]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
Yeah, I mean, so there'll be a meeting tomorrow, so Tuesday in Milan between Inzaghi and the kind of executive team two years ago when Inter lost the final to Man City in Istanbul, it felt like the end already then. Not because of the life of this team and the average age, but because of the ownership situation at the club then where you had Chinese owners who'd taken out these very big loans, high interest, didn't look like their situation was going to improve. And lo and behold, they were ejected last year by the lender Oaktree. Oaktree have come in and they. Yeah, they want Inter to rejuvenate. They would have wanted that rejuvenation even if they had won 5 nil on Saturday night. So that is what's coming. They'll announce a young player from Marseille in midweek. They've already signed a young Croatian player as well. But the question for Inzaghi is, you know, he has a big offer from Saudi Arabia. Is it the right time for him to go to Saudi Arabia? Yeah. Would you want to go out on the. On the back of a five nil defeat? I think that's a. Considering everything he's done and achieved at Inter, I think, yeah, he would have liked to have gone out on a high, you know, rather than a historic low. Yeah. The biggest losing margin in a Champions League final, which, as he said afterwards, does not reflect his Inter. He didn't recognize the performance that his team put in.
- [16:38]
Paige
James did. People who support Inter, are they talking about Inzaghi? As Inzaghi out after this game and also after not winning the league, is there a very emotional backlash to it?
- [16:50]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
Again, not to draw every comparison back to Man United, as we've kind of. We've done with psg, but you've got the online fans and you've got the fans at San Siro and the fans at San Siro, you know, they recognize that the last four or five years under Inzaghi, they've seen the best football interplayed, not just for one generation, but maybe two generations. You know, they. They think the. The standard of football and the style of play has been a lot more entertaining and attacking than. Yeah, even when the original Ronaldo was. Was playing for them. And then you've got the online support who says, you know, this guy, come on, look at him. You know, his substitutions are whack. We've lost title races twice in the last four years on the final day. We've lost two Champions League finals, when in actual fact, you know, I would say that if you're reaching finals, if you're taking title races down to the final day, people should remember that rather than just the outcome. Yeah, it takes a hell of a lot to do that. And given the financial situation at the club when he took over, which I alluded to, where they had to sell Lukaku to Chelsea for that incredible fee, they had to sell Hakimi, who scored the opening goal on Saturday night, not only in order to basically balance the books, but to stay a going concern. When people look at inter, the narrative, prevailing narrative of both their Champions League finals appearances is like it's either going to be the most one sided Champions League final, which was the narrative before City and was the reality against psg. People look at them as the underdogs because they look at the team sheet and they go down each name on paper and they're like, well, the opponent's player in that position's better. The opponent's player in that position is better. The opponent's player in that position is better. None of these guys are going to win the Ballon d' Or. I think that has to go into your judgment of Inzaghi because if that's your view of their team, then he's done some exceptional work. But we'll see whether he stays or he goes.
- [18:50]
Adam Leventhal
James, thank you very much for coming on. I'll let you continue drinking coffee decompress and we'll catch up with you again soon. Next we'll get the tactical insight of Liam Tharm and we'll also look at the role of both Luis Enrique and Luis Campos in building this European cup winning Paris St. Germain side.
- [19:13]
Liam Tharm
This is the Athletic FC podcast with Adam Leventhal.
- [19:19]
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- [19:49]
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- [20:39]
Liam Tharm
You're listening to the Athletic FC podcast with Adam Levantal.
- [20:45]
Adam Leventhal
Before we move on, we want to hear from you. Check out the link in the description to give us your feedback on the Athletic FC podcast. What content have you enjoyed the most and what would you like us to be doing differently next season? So do let us know. That link is in the description right now. And thanks very much for your continued support. Let's welcome our tactics writer Liam Tharm into the conversation. Liam, thanks very much for being part of this. I wanted to just comment on some of the things that we've heard there from, you know, James and Adam. In the first part in particular, about that fast start and the aggressive nature in which Paris Saint Germain were pressing from the front, which reaped rewards early on. They were 2 nil up within 20 minutes. Just tell us, you know, how they did it and how impressed you were with how they did it from the word go.
- [21:42]
Liam Tharm
Yeah, that's honestly, that's been a trademark, really. This team in the knockout rounds, at least we saw it away to Aston Villa, away to Arsenal, away to Liverpool, Dembele, Hikimi, those games sort of popping up with goals sort of inside 12, 15 minutes, two goals in fact, against Villa early on at Villa park in the second leg, that gave them that buffer that when they did have a bit of a wobble that we've seen of PSG teams in years gone past that would have had them out, they had enough to sort of squeeze through and that's, that's been really the super strength of this team this season, or at least in the knockout rounds because in fact they, they still struggled in, in the league phase. We must remember there were discussions I, I wrote a piece even sort of, I think after five games where they'd only won once and were Genu needed a perfect nine points from their final three games in order to go through. They squeezed through the, you know, into the knockout rounds, didn't, didn't get a top eight spot and there were question marks at the time of is this team too young, too inexperienced? Is it lacking a striker? Are there depth issues? Is it lacking more physicality? Like we saw them sort of, you know, really struggle against Bayern Munich and against Arsenal and I think by the time they reached the final, all of those questions have been answered that we've seen Lewis, Enrique now go through. And I'm sure we're touching it more with the squad building, but so many different iterations in two years of what this PSG side are. There's players like Manuel de Garte who were signed, sold now to Manchester United that didn't cut it in midfield and you saw Bradley Barcola have a phenomenal season and then be dropped when frat Scaly was brought in. We've seen Dembele go from winger to striker and all those parts came together in the final where that aggression that James is speaking about with, with Usman Dembele leading the press is everything he wanted for Kylian Mbappe and never quite had because you know, really he didn't need a player to score 30, 40 goals a season. In fact, he's got that now with Usman Dembele without, it seems even sort of trying for that. But it's that, it's that quality, that team that can then press as 11 players that can really pin, pin an opposition team back and that took the game away from Inter. Absolutely. And you know, I think the fact that Inter had arrived having gone so deep into a title race, lost cups that they look drained and tired, but PSG just completely pounced on that and went, okay, you're tired, we're going to make you run and make you work. And I think when the running numbers came up late into the second half, that Inter team had run an awful lot more than PSG had.
- [23:53]
Paige
Liam, who do you think of the teams that have played against PSG in the Champions League knockouts came other than sort of scoreline, but just stylistically came closest to not finding them out, but really kind of working out what the system is and how best to stop it. Is it as simple as Aston villa for that 20 minute period where it looked like they might blow them away? Or did you think there was times where Arteta or Slot seemed to have their number?
- [24:20]
Liam Tharm
Yeah, I thought Liverpool were good, good in the second leg, but again that was because it was clearly quite a tight game. As you say, it's hard to look really beyond, beyond that Villa period. I think especially sort of when Rashford came on. I think that's the only time I've really seen PSG stuck where they were wanting to press and vid were finding solutions in terms of getting those direct balls over the top. They had those runners where, you know, it's, it's really a system that when we look at Inter, I think were set up to actually try and break in. There was a reality where you say, well, look, if you're going to push fullbacks high in the press and they can get demarco Dumfries out as swing backs running beyond, you've got two strikers, you' your two center backs, Marinos and William Pacho, who have been really good at this all season. But you're saying defend one of the best strike partnerships in Europe. That, that then comes down to execution, I think, and you're relying on players to win jewels and it's, you know, there can easily be an alternative universe where that goes a very different way. So I think Villa were, were really, really good. And as I mentioned before, that's why it was so important that, you know, PSG had that buffer and scored as early as they did because they notoriously have these wobbles. And I think everyone does. You have to win ugly, right? At least once or twice. This is a team that played, what is it, 16, 17 games, played all the league phase games, obviously extra knockout rounds that had to do it the hard way. So that, you know, I think for PSG to win like that still at Villa was also a big sort of litmus test at the time.
- [25:34]
Adam Leventhal
It's interesting that you mentioned Aston Villa because obviously they have Unai, Emery and Monchi with, with that great sort of cohesive partnership in terms of recruitment. Adam, from, from your point of view, many people will have, will have seen the celebrations on the pitch in, in Munich and they will have seen this sort of quite diminutive bald guy with glasses on, very, very happy celebrating with Luis Enrique and they would have gone, who's that guy? That was Luis Campo. And just tell us about the impact that he has had in terms of, you know, laying the foundations, then working with Luis Enrique, who arrived a year after he had arrived and now they've delivered together this great success.
- [26:18]
Paige
Well, I mean, to be fair, he's very good at telling his own story. He's never been particularly shy and sort of highlighting his role, but he's an interesting character. He'd been at the club before, I think, actually probably his first period around the club. There had actually been this sense that maybe PSG had been a bit too reliant on agents like George Mendes and they'd spent too much money and some of the decisions were more about kind of star names than, than really building a cohesive team. But I think actually probably Lewis Campus more impressive work had Been at Monaco previously, if you remember those years back, where Monaco had come up with this really kind of exciting team that gatecrashed the Champions League. And you had players like Bernardo Silva and Falcao. And who else was in that Monaco team?
- [27:13]
Liam Tharm
Fabinho, yeah. Thomas Lamar, I think.
- [27:16]
Paige
Yeah, yeah. It was a really kind of. Of well recruited. James Rodriguez was there, I think, for a period. So that was a kind of interesting spell. And then what you had really was a couple of years ago, kind of post World cup, coming out of the Messi name. Messi, Neymar, Mbappe era at psg. I think, to be honest, PSG were almost out of ideas. It was like, you know, we have tried everyone. We have bought every possible superstar. We've tried so many superstar coaches, whether it was Tuccio, Pochettino, Ancelotti, plenty of different options. And they brought Luis Campos back. And there was a very intentional strategy, really, for the first time, which I think, to be fair, came more from the president, Nasral Khalifi, perhaps even than Campos himself, which was kind of coming off the World cup, where psg. I think a lot of the reason why PSG were doing those superstar names for the first decade or so was in the lead up to the World Cup. It was about relevance, it was about brand building, it was about nation building to a large extent. You're allying all of these famous names with this brand, and the brand kind of had multiple layers to it. You had the brand of Paris. I think the Qataris have always just liked the idea of having glitz and glamour in Paris and associating Paris with that. You see that even with, you know, I live in the States and the amount of people I see wearing the PSG leisure wear, right, which is. It's more Paris than PSG actually, you know, in the branding. So I think they'd always like that. But I think what they then came to realize is we need this to feel more Parisian as a team. You know, we want more local talent or more French talent to come into this team. We don't want it to be a kind of United nations experience in quite the way that it has been for the past kind of 10, 15 years or so. And I think also the Ultras, the Parisian ultras, were fed up of this PSG team. There were protests against players like Messi, against Neymar, against Al Khelifi himself. So there was this very intentional rebuild, I think, last autumn, where, as Liam says, the starts, the Champions League was slow, was a genuine kind of potential breaking point for this entire project, because if they'd have gotten rid of Enrique at that point, you probably then say, well, it's failed for Campos. Right. And Al Khelaifi's latest raid build has failed as well. And even if you go back, you know, you remember in the group stage, they were 20 down against Man City. It was a game that they really needed to be points from, and they're two nil down. And really, they came back in that game. And, okay, it was a weak Man City's team at that point, but I think that was really like a launchpad for this team to say, okay, we can do this. And since then, you know, it's like anything, right? Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan. So all of a sudden, now that PSG is successful, everyone will want to claim credit for it. I do think. And, you know, I've got the WhatsApp messages from comms people at PSG kind of briefing this, you know, late 2022, early 2023, where they're saying, we are going to very deliberately change our strategy to become more about a team. That was part of what the Mbappe leaving was about as well. Yes, on the one hand, he wanted to leave the club, but at the same time, I think it also allowed them to draw a line under a culture that prioritized individual demands over the collective, both on the pitch and off the pitch.
- [30:57]
Adam Leventhal
They still spent a lot of money doing it, though, didn't they? 240 million euros this season, 455 million last year. Liam, from your point of view, they're not. Well, it doesn't look as if they're going to have to spend that much money now because the team is so young and have shown that they can be very successful.
- [31:19]
Liam Tharm
Yeah, they've still spent silly money. Right. I don't think we can really ever get away from that. That's one of the biggest budgets of any.
- [31:26]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
Any.
- [31:26]
Liam Tharm
Any team they've come to be got the biggest budget in. In Ligue 1, as Adam mentioned about sort of their. Them kind of running out of ideas and falling back on. Well, what's the most sort of logical way of doing it?
- [31:37]
Paige
I'm.
- [31:38]
Liam Tharm
I'm amazed, to be. To be frank, it took them this long because you look at any kind of list of the representation of elite footballers at a major tournament or among the major leagues, Ligue 1 comes out more often than not as the top league for where these players have come through. It's, you know, one of the top leagues at the Premier League. Goes to design players, particularly young players.
- [31:54]
Paige
It's.
- [31:55]
Liam Tharm
It's the best league for minutes to under 21s, under 23s. It's notoriously a selling league partly because the other clubs haven't got the budget that PSG do so need to develop this talent and need to sell it elsewhere to survive. And Paris is a city is notorious for just being such a diverse place with so many people, such a good footballing culture, street footballing culture, cage football that you get so many top prisian players. And of course psg, when they were last in a Champions League final, lost to a Paris born player in Kingsley Coman who I believe was once on their books in his academy days. I think that must have contributed to them saying hang on a second, we've missed out on the biggest stage here because of a player that we weren't even sort of prepared to give the time, resources, patience, attention to and has gone on to succeed elsewhere. So it makes sense and it has also dilated the quality a little bit in Ligue 1 where they are able now to or prepared to now. So I should say to take the the talent, you look at how much Corona have fallen off in recent seasons even though they've had the likes of Rafinha come through there, Desiree due now as a run academy boy. Bradley Barcola was at Lyon, a real top player there. But they also deserve a bit of credit I think for the academy graduates that have come through. So Warren Zaire Emery was a big player for them last season, a bit less so this season he's not really first choice but again he came off the bench late on in Munich. Senny Maulu as well, that of course has been mentioned as the fifth goal scorer. Another academy boy which as amazing it was that PSG was sort of 4, 5 and up late on. Just remarked at the time watching the game going psg not only they four, five and up in the Champions League final, they're bringing two academy graduates on here. It's a much more sustainable long term approach. They've still had some big misses in there. You look at how much they spent on Randal Kolo Moane, Hugo Ekatike is perhaps another one in there. Agarte they spent money on and had to flip. So they're not going to get it right 100% of the time. But I think the fact that they're spending still big money but on more players and younger players means they can either have that success and they'll be worth way more or they can kind of cash them in quickly if it's not quite working and move on to someone else like they're done with Ugarte, for example.
- [33:50]
Paige
I think, Liam, the other thing that that's, that's been significant is, is PSG have had this institutional capital investment from the United States. They've got this small stake now from Arktos in the States. And I think that also brings just a bit more of a demand for responsibility, to be frank. You know, when it's not just solely a Qatari project and you have this external capital which you have to be a bit more responsible for, then I think that has also played a part in PSG thinking a little bit more sensibly over time. So I think they have come to change their mind in any sense. But I think also on top of that, you've got this capital.
- [34:30]
Adam Leventhal
Well, talking of transfers, don't forget here on the Athletic FC podcast we'll have you covered throughout the summer as we explore some of the biggest deals taking place with the likes of David Ornstein. Next though, we are going to delve deeper into what comes next for Paris Saint Germain and the ripple effect in European football of them winning the Champions League.
- [34:52]
Liam Tharm
This is the Athletic FC podcast with Adam Leventhal.
- [34:58]
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- [36:44]
Adam Leventhal
Now, before we get more from Liam and Adam, we do have to mark the fact that two people have died following the disorder in France following Paris St Germain's Champions League win. 192 further people were injured and some 491 arrests have been made, according to authorities in France. And it has for, for many overshadowed Paris Saint Germain's success. Their first Champions League victory. Adam, I want to, to concentrate with you on, on the football. You know, we've mentioned him a couple of times in the show already. Nasser Al Khalifi central. We saw to those trophy celebrations on the podium, on the pitch. How much pressure has he put on himself and those around him to deliver a moment like this?
- [37:35]
Paige
Well, he's got a very interesting life. I mean, this is a guy who was, I think he used to be a tennis player in Qatar. I think he might even have coached the emir in tennis at a certain point. And he'd been entrusted in leading this club for a long time. And they also allowed him, by the way, a lot of slip ups, you know, a lot of times where it was quite humiliating for psg. If you think back, you know, to the, that famous remontado against Barcelona, or you think about Real Madrid's late win against them, or the one where Rashford scores the penalty in the last minute. I mean, there's just these countless examples of psg, despite huge investment, just spectacularly failing and often in quite an entertaining way for other people. You know, you would almost tune into PSG in the Champions League to see how they're going to mess it up. So look, I mean, Al Khelaifi is, he's one of those president slash. He's not really the owner. He is the frontman of a consortium vehicle, state whatever you want to call it. That has kind of made himself a bit of a star, to be honest. He'd obviously been a significant figure in French football from kind of 201011 through to 2016, 17. But then I think when they signed Neymar, that felt like he really sort of became front and center in terms of. In terms of a European global football perspective. You know, I remember him sitting at that press conference with Neymar and basically saying, you know, yesterday, this club was worth a billion. Now with Neymar, oh, it's worth 1.5 billion. It was something to that effect. I mean, it was a kind of crazy statement which had no real basis to it whatsoever. I mean, you just spent about one and a half billion to get him there, plus wages. So he was kind of this growing, growing figure, I think, around the Super League. He, whether you call it accidental, deliberate, whatever you want to call it, it as one of the few prominent clubs that actually refused to go in to the Super League. Psg, along with the German clubs Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund were the holdouts. Now, there's all sorts of questions you can ask about why they did that. Was it about geopolitical concerns, you know, which we saw with some other people come to the surface was, you know, ahead of the World cup, essentially, do you want Qatar to be seen to be leading some sort of breakaway away from UEFA and kind of a locked league? But I think, as well, Nasser Al Khelaifi is a man who wears many hats and part of the other business is being sport, who had the broadcast rights to show the Champions League. So it wasn't that smart to get behind a rival league that they didn't have the media rights to. But then I think I did speak to several people at the time who also said he's actually quite loyal to the institutions that he works with, the people he works with, and he thought this was wrong. Now, these weren't people who were genuinely pro the Qatari project or pro Al Khalifi, but they said, you know, we did actually have the impression that he thought this idea was wrong. Now, others may have different versions, have heard different versions of that. So as a result of that, he kind of got pushed into. What happened was, you see all these big European clubs en masse, exit these European institutions like UEFA of the European Clubs association, which creates this vacuum of leadership which he steps into. So all of a sudden he's like, got a really senior role at UEFA, a really senior role at the European Clubs association, where he's the chair, president, whatever you want to call it. And it leaves him almost as like this kingmaker now of European football, and now finally, with him winning the Champions League, he kind of sits right at the top of that. Now, there was, of course, in between all of this post World Cup Post Super League, you know, you saw Qatar looking at other clubs, you know, that's how much they'd kind of become frustrated at psg where, you know, they looked at spurs, they looked at Manchester United, they looked at lots of different vehicles to do that. There was Nasser. Al Khalifi was definitely involved at a certain point in the conversations around Man United. So how that would have all shaken up with psg, I think is still a bit unclear. You know, I think his team would always say, oh, he just had the relationship, so he was opening doors. I'm a bit more cynical on that. I think it may have been something slightly different. So what you see is now he's become one of the most recognizable kind of frontman figures in world football.
- [42:05]
Adam Leventhal
Liam, from your perspective, do you think this Paris Saint Germain side are built for continued success Now?
- [42:12]
Liam Tharm
I suppose that we then get into discussion about what continued success looks like. But it's always funny to me that of 48, 72 hours ago, always the narrative around PSG was, you know, they never won a Champions League, are they sort of cursed or burdened? And now it's how many can they win in a row? And it shifts very quickly. And I think that the reality is probably always somewhere, somewhere between the two because as we said, look, they were fairly poor and struggled in big games at the start of this, this Champions League campaign. I will say they've benefited massively from the way that Ligue has been restructured. So you've now got an 18 team league, not a 20 team league. They ditched the second cup a while back as well. So a big sort of comment Simone and Zaki made after the game was, you know, they didn't have the title race anywhere near as long as what Inter did, you know, pushing them really, really deep. So PSG could rotate throughout the latter game weeks and basically throughout the whole season, I think they had the title wrapped up something silly like early April. Basically, you know, PSG were unbeaten en route to winning that title, so that, that will massively sort of help them. But at the same time, you go through the list of sort of Champions League winners and I think it's six different winners now in the past seven years we've not had any while and retain the trophy since, since Madrid had their sort of three peat back in the mid to late 2000 and tens and you don't get a lot of teams that have won it. Even making the final again, you don't get a lot of sort of repeat, repeat, fine. That's obviously City have made a couple in quick succession. Inter now, been a couple finals in a few years, but it is hard to do because you can have a really well set up squad. You might even, as Lewis Enrique pointed out the season, you can get a really hard league face draw and that could put you out if you don't, don't, you know, compete well enough. And it depends who you then face in in the knockout round. I would have been really intrigued as to how this might have gone if Barcelona had got through and it had been PSG Barcelona, that might have been a bit more of a clash of styles. So they're definitely, I think, better set up at least. I can only really sort of speak technically and tactically in terms of squad depth than they've been before. But I do think they still need to add in some sort of backups and second, third choices because their first 11 is really, really good and they've probably got a squad of 16, 17. You go, there's some top, top players there, I think, think. And this is obviously true for every club, so it's a silly hypothetical to say, but they are only ever sort of a minor injury crisis away from going. How do you fill in the blanks and deal with that? But I think they'll be really exciting to watch again next season. They've been really good fun now for a couple years under Lewis Enrique and what he's coached them into has been. It's been really fantastic.
- [44:35]
Adam Leventhal
And last question to you, Adam, how do you think this success for Paris Saint Germain would have been felt at Real Madrid? You know, not specifically Kylian Mbappe, but, you know, Real Madrid as a Champions League winning monster and also the likes of Manchester City as well and elsewhere in European football. The fact that they've now done it and they will be at the very top.
- [45:03]
Paige
I think all those big teams will be a little bit shaken because PSG have kind of been the threat waiting around the corner, right? It's always been if they get their act together with the resources they've got, then they're pretty hard to stop. I do think at the same time, you know, a lot of teams this year maybe had a slightly down year which allowed PSG to benefit. I mean, by the way, I think they're an unbelievable team. Like, I mean, we will talk about that final the way I think that people talk about the Barcelona final at Wembley against Manchester United. I think it's that kind of level. But, you know, certainly it helps when you have Real Madrid probably having their tail off year coming to terms with how you get too many superstars probably in the lineup, but you would expect them to get stronger now under new coach and over the next few years I would expect Chelsea, as this team grows older to become a threat. Liverpool, you know, have already recruited aggressively at the start of this window. Arsenal, their fans tell us are only ever one signing away from winning the Champions League League. So you've, you know, you've got lots of, lots of potential rivals and that's, you know, without mentioning Bayern Munich and you know, other teams that can obviously provide a threat. But I do think the threat will come from probably the Premier League, Real Madrid and Barcelona and Bayern Munich. I mean that is kind of where European football feels like it's at now. Feels a bit harsh on Serie A perhaps maybe Napoli could do something. But you know, you'd be surprised. What I would say is I was watching CBS on Saturday and I saw Thierry Henry describing this as an important moment for French football. And on the one hand I agree in that you saw players, as Liam says, from the PSG academy coming on late in the game. You've got French players starring, that's obviously great. The flip side is when PSG have success like this, by them winning the Champions League this year year and then going to the Club World cup where they'll likely get to semi finals perhaps minimum, that means they've got an extra $200 million, right, that their rivals in the French league don't have. And that's a league that's already so imbalanced and disproportionately weighted towards psg with all the revenues they've been able to generate over the years, plus the resources that they inject. And that's where I actually think, I don't know if this is good, to be honest, for French football, other than maybe it just makes people watching in the States, for example, think oh, I want to get involved in French football, right, and maybe we can have other ownerships that bring money into the game and bring renewed investment. But really at the moment, the French TV deal domestically has been a disaster for several years. So there isn't really a threat within France whatsoever to PSG anymore. And that gap is only going to become bigger as a result of their success. So that's not their fault. But I do wonder if there's a knock on effect of that even within their European performance where as we've seen really over the years, if you're not challenged on a weekly basis, it is quite hard when it gets to spring to just spring into action for midweeks and always hit those levels.
- [48:17]
Adam Leventhal
Adam, thank you very much. Liam as well. James earlier on for all of your insight. Thank you very much for listening too. Just to let you know, we are here three days a week through the summer, Monday, Wednesday and Friday reacting to all the big stories along the way and also your place for all the key transfer news with the best writers in football including our very own transfer guru, David Ornstein. So we will see you on Wednesday.
- [48:43]
Liam Tharm
You've been listening to the Athletic FC Podcast. The producers were Guy Clark, Mike Stavrou and Jay Beal. The executive producer was Aidy Moorhead. To listen to other great athletic podcasts for free, search for the Athletic on Apple, Spotify and all the usual places. The Athletic FC Podcast is an athletic media company production.
- [49:02]
Athletic FC Podcast Host
The Athletic FC Podcast Network.
- [49:11]
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