2024-02-08 18:24:44
The president of Paris-SG indicated this Thursday, February 8 that he had endorsed the decision to leave the Parc des Princes in the coming years. Much more complicated than that in practice.
“The Parc des Princes is over for us.” The UEFA executive committee, which met this Thursday, February 8 in Paris, will have allowed the president of Paris-SG Nasser al-Khelaïfi to send a small bomb… as well as the centerpiece of a fool’s game which been running for months. However, Parisian management had issued a mezzo voce communication on the subject in recent days. We must therefore understand a knee-jerk reaction from the Parisian leader, which originates earlier in the day.
In the morning, the Paris Council officially closed the door to a sale of the Parc des Princes, considered in Ouest France at the start of the week by the socialist mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo, “as a heritage of Parisians” : curtain. Old, the desire of Paris-SG to buy the Park responds to a logic to which all the biggest European clubs have been subject: the mastery of the working tool and the “match day” revenues, the fact of to be an owner making it possible to make adjustments and to inflate, in Paris as everywhere, the turnover of “hospitality”, these VIP boxes sold at a high price (we are talking about a million euros per year in the case of the Park) to the sponsors. The town hall’s veto therefore triggered Al-Khelaïfi’s reaction. But not only. In the afternoon, a number of media or influencers close to the club were submitted language elements.
Paris town hall is not monolithic
Examples, in bulk: “It is not us who choose to leave, but the town hall leaves us no choice”, “The president [al-Khelaïfi] built for the next hundred years and not on the scale of a six-year municipal mandate,” “We are activating our moving projects and all our teams are mobilized in this direction.” Or again “the president believes that the club has lost eight years but if the town hall had said eight years ago that the stadium was not for sale, we would have already moved, except that they spent these years dangling a sale before refusing it, wasting the club’s time.
The very last argument is partly understood. Because the Paris town hall is not united on the issue of the sale of the park: if Anne Hidalgo refuses, the Paris town hall has been blowing hot and cold on this issue for several years, the The delays mentioned by the club are therefore very real. Another part of the Parisian executive does not exclude options that it considers very favorable to PSG, such as a 99-year long lease with advantageous clauses. The somewhat offbeat exit of the deputy mayor of Paris, David Belliard, at the beginning of January, explaining that he would oppose “any sale of the Parc des Princes to Qatar or other private interests” had also made shout – literally, according to witnesses – Al-Khelaïfi, evoking in the process a form of racism.
Poker game
Hidalgo’s refusal also raises the question of the municipal elections of 2026, the councilor having not yet indicated whether she intended to run again. In other words: in the event of a political change (left or right), the game can open up. And relaunch a possible sale of the Parc des Princes, which could push the club to maintain a form of media pressure from time to time.
For its part, the town hall brandishes the amount, described by it as “ridiculous”, proposed in April by the club to buy the park: 38 million euros where the land is among the most expensive in France, where the stadium Vélodrome de Marseille was valued at around 550 million euros three years ago. The current lease of the Park runs until 2043, Paris-SG being required to play its team there: it is difficult to imagine that the club would send its women’s teams there (since the fact that it is a men’s team and female is not specified in the lease) to “hold” the contract while sending the men elsewhere.
Suffice to say that the poker game is going well. And she’s not about to stop. It takes five to six years to build a stadium capable of hosting a club of the standing of Paris-SG, double that if you count the inevitable appeals from local residents or environmental defense associations: the club’s communication on the fact to convene those responsible for the “removal projects” on Thursday afternoon can thus raise a smile.
Fancy Options
And then leave for where? Mentioned in recent days, the Yvelin sites of Montigny-le-Bretonneux or Poissy (where the deputy and former mayor, Karl Olive, would welcome PSG in his constituency) are too far from the capital, “and little in touch with a reality which sees those who populate the boxes disembark by private plane at Le Bourget, dine with a view of the Eiffel Tower and sign the contract which brought them there on a corner of the table while Kylian Mbappé and others exercise their art below. laughs someone very close to the club. The two racecourses, Auteuil and Saint-Cloud, seem more credible options.
But these are not precisely fallow sites, and they belong to France Galop. The Charléty (where Paris FC plays) or Jean-Bouin (next to the park, where the Stade Français rugby players play) options, probably distributed secretly by the club, appear very fanciful: it would be necessary to shave the existing and affect surrounding social housing. Not to mention that these two sites belong, like the Parc des Princes, to Paris town hall.
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