Since Qatar bought PSG in 2011, they have dominated Ligue 1 but have continually failed in the Champions League. For a second straight season, they have been knocked out of the competition in the first round of the knockout stages, the Round of 16, failing to score a single goal across two legs against Bayern München in a 3-0 aggregate loss. The previous year, they fell victim to a rapid-fire Karim Benzema hat-trick as part of a Real Madrid “Remontada”.
PSG have spent more than any other club on player salaries, signing Kylian Mbappé to an unprecedented contract this past summer to convince him to stay instead of signing with the club that eliminated them, Real Madrid.
Yet keeping Mbappé alongside other blockbuster earners Lionel Messi and Neymar, hiring a new manager, and signing several other players was not enough. PSG are back in the same place they were in 2022, behind the true historic giants of European football, fan-owned clubs Bayern and Real.
Why has PSG’s sporting project failed despite superstars and more than a decade of obscene financial investment?
Let’s break down the key reasons.
Focusing on marketing over squad-building
For the most part, PSG have prioritized marketing and signing known names above all else. Even from the beginning when they weren’t attracting the likes of Messi and Neymar, they were still going for name-brand players. Zlatan Ibrahimović was the first face of PSG, and he put up some jaw-dropping numbers to help PSG dominate Ligue 1. After going decades without a league title, they won four in a row with Zlatan as their top scorer, with the Swede scoring 38 goals and 13 assists in his final season of 2015/16.
Neymar, Mbappé, and, in 2022/23, Messi have all put up sensational numbers of their own. Edinson Cavani did, too, from an attacking perspective, as did current Juventus star Ángel Di María. There are plenty of other great forwards who have played for PSG in the last 12 years, too.
But none of them have hoisted the Champions League. The problem is PSG focused too much on piling up stars and too little on building continuity and a squad identity around them. Superstar players need support. Lionel Messi wouldn’t have achieved the success he did at Barcelona without Xavi, Sergio Busquets, Carles Puyol, and so many others. The same goes for Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid with Luka Modrić, Toni Kroos, Raphaël Varane, and the countless other players.
PSG came agonizingly close to the Champions League crown in 2019/20, falling to Bayern München in the Final. Mbappé and Neymar, the two superstars they signed in the same window, led them there. The idea that signing them both was a mistake is flawed. PSG were right to go for those two, because, at the time, they needed that quality.
The issue is they went for Messi in 2021 because he was a marketing opportunity instead of focusing their financial power on supplying the midfield and defense with better players. They tried to do all of that in one window in 2022, and that led to some panic-buys and sub-optimal decisions.
Bad investments in midfield
PSG hired Luís Campos as the new sporting director, replacing the incompetent Leonardo, and found a new manager in Christophe Galtier to replace Mauricio Pochettino. Both were good moves. Campos built the Monaco and Lille sides that have been the only clubs to dethrone PSG in Ligue 1 since their dominance began in 2012/13, while Galtier coached that Lille side and has been able to get more out of Neymar and Messi than Pochettino – who was never a good fit for a Hollywood-type club like PSG – ever did.
The impetus for hiring Campos and Galtier was Mbappé. He wanted PSG to get more serious about building a sporting project instead of signing veteran big names and assembling a random squad of marketing power. Perhaps Mbappé learned from the mistakes of his favorite club, Real Madrid, and their Galácticos era.
But PSG didn’t sign the targets Mbappé (and probably Campos and Galter) had in mind. All their money did not convince Aurélien Tchouaméni who, seemingly wisely, preferred the stability and structure of the Real Madrid project. After all, they were the defending champions. They also missed out on Milan Škriniar in central defense – though he will be coming in 2023 – and could not make substantial upgrades to their thin center back position.
In midfield, PSG added the oft-injured Renato Sanches, the promising Vitinha, and an auxiliary player in Fabián Ruiz. Vitinha has worked out, but Sanches has started just three games and Ruiz has been one of the worst signings in European football.
The problem isn’t about one window, though. There are always going to be hits and misses, and Ruiz and Sanches could still work out. The issue is that PSG have come up short for years, which is why players like Eduardo Camavinga and Tchouaméni insisted on leaving Ligue 1 for Real Madrid; they don’t trust PSG. And they don’t trust PSG for 1) organizational instability (I will cover that later) and 2) lacking European success compared to Madrid. The big difference between Madrid and PSG on the market is that Madrid prioritized midfield quality earlier. Casemiro, Kroos, and Modrić are three of the greatest bargains in the history of the modern transfer market.
Not recognizing talent
On top of that, PSG have failed to recognize their own up-and-coming talent. Even a state-run club needs to be able to promote from within. While money is no object in PSG’s player recruitment, the reality is that all the money in the world cannot buy you all the players. Some players may not want to leave until a later date, such as Škriniar, and some may not want to join your club at all for other reasons (Camavinga and Tchouaméni).
PSG have been notoriously poor at giving their own youth players attention and opportunities, probably because they invest so much time and money on marketing and signing big names. Those players get the priority. I’d imagine PSG would have went further with Christopher Nkunku (one of the best players in Europe) and Moussa Diaby (one of the best young left-footed wingers) as options in the squad.
Awful leadership
The biggest reason for any organization’s failures goes all the way to the top of the pyramid, and PSG have been one of the most inept organizations from that perspective. Leonardo was a joke of a sporting director, and if he were not fired, Mbappé would have probably left. That it took Mbappé threatening to join a Champions League rival to fire Leonardo, whose transfer “strategy” was key to Thomas Tuchel’s unrest and years of underperformance, tells you all you need to know about the complacency within.
Rumors of locker room instability have constantly been an issue in Paris, with many openly wondering if star players simply get a pass because PSG cared so much more about being a marketing club (probably for Qatar’s own sportswashing reasons to look like a stronger brand, especially before the World Cup) than actually winning.
Carousel of coaches
Hand-in-hand with that issue is the coaching carousel in Paris. PSG have gone through managers almost every year. Carlo Ancelotti was the first hire of the Qatar era and honestly their best hire. Because he was the only manager they did not fire. Carletto asked to leave for the opportunity at Real Madrid, immediately won the Champions League, then came back to Madrid later and immediately won the UCL again – at PSG’s expense.
After Ancelotti, PSG hired Laurent Blanc, but they mutually agreed to pay him 22 million euros to leave after being knocked out of the Champions League quarterfinals. Their next hire after three years of Blanc? Unai Emery. The less said the better.
PSG seemed to hit another home run in Thomas Tuchel, who helped get even more out of the stars while beginning to build a real structure. Instead of supporting him after he helped PSG reach the Champions League Final for the first time, Leonardo signed the likes of Danilo Pereira, Moise Kean, and Alessandro Florenzi on loan with Rafinha coming in for 1.5 million euros. What a great window to supply Tuchel with the players he needed to compete against the likes of Bayern and Manchester City in the UCL. None of those players, with the possible exception of Danilo as a versatile squad player, are of PSG quality.
After Tuchel, PSG hired Pochettino despite him obviously not being a fit for the club. Galtier may not be safe from the boot in his first season at the helm, because this club is impatient and, again, obsessed with the big names. Despite multiple rejections from Marseille-born Zinédine Zidane, PSG still dream of the French icon. And José Mourinho has been mentioned as a possible replacement despite being a volatile option who may not fit the politics of the club.
There has been little consistency at the club over the past 10 years, and with rumors swirling around Galtier, there doesn’t appear to be any effort from the organization to throw support behind a true project over the long term.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.