179 million euros from the desert
Paris St. Germain is restructuring itself with fantasy transfers
September 14, 2023, 6:22 p.m
Verratti, Neymar, Draxler: PSG finds a new way to undermine financial fair play. The French champion sells slow-moving items to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And they are not alone.
There is actually a rule that should ensure that football is fair at international level. Financial Fair Play (FFP) basically stipulates that a club should not spend more money than it earns. It is intended to prevent top clubs from going on uninhibited shopping sprees. And operate miles beyond their means and distort the market. But practice shows: the regulation doesn’t really work.
There are several examples of this, such as Manchester City. The club is the role model for all financiers from the Arabian Peninsula. Sheikh Mansour, part of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, bought the club in 2008 for 250 million euros. Since then he has provided Man City with far more money. With consequences: There are now more than 100 violations of the Premier League’s FFP on City’s path to multiple English championships and the Champions League title.
And yet City are not the ones taking the FFP to the extreme. Paris St. Germain was actually supposed to be Qatar’s flagship project alongside the World Cup. The owners from the Emirate invested huge amounts of money in the sportswashing dream of winning the Champions League as quickly as possible. No savings were made on the transfer market for this. The result was a star ensemble made up of Kylian Mbappé, Neymar, Lionel Messi and Sergio Ramos, which spent an enormous amount of money and yet never won the Champions League trophy.
PSG transfer multiplies the market value of his new club
Now, in the summer of 2023, there will be a really big change at PSG. Messi, Ramos and Neymar are already gone, and this will soon also apply to Mbappé, who does not want to extend his contract, which ends in 2024. So money is needed again to sign new stars like ex-Frankfurt player Randal Kolo Muani. But even if there is apparently no limit, the FFP represents a hurdle. Those responsible for PSG reached into their bag of tricks – for example with Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo successor Gonçalo Ramos. The French only pay Benfica part of the transfer fee, the rest goes later as bonuses. And: Ramos will initially be loaned out for one year with an option to buy. The expenses will not be incurred until the next transfer summer.
And the club has also become creative in raising money. The “secret” is transfers to the desert. PSG have sold a total of four players to Saudi Arabia and Qatar so far this summer. The club earned 159 million euros. Most recently, midfielder Marco Verratti moved to Al-Arabi SC to Qatar. No official figure is known for the transfer fee, but according to transfer guru Fabrizio Romano it should be around 45 million euros – well above market value and a new record for the Qatari league, the country from which the PSG owners come. The whole absurdity is evident in the fact that the entire squad of Al-Arabi SC According to transfermarkt.de, it previously had a market value of 11.1 million euros.
In addition to Verratti, the former Dortmund and Leipzig player Abdou Diallo also moved to Al-Arabi. The impressive sum of 15 million euros was spent on this. The Dutchman Georginio Wijnaldum moved to Al-Ettifaq in Saudi Arabia for 8 million euros. And superstar Neymar joined Al-Hilal in the newly rich league for 90 million euros. They all receive sums that are at least at the upper limit of their market value. The crowning glory would be another rumor: According to Sky Julian Draxler, world champion in 2014, is also set to move to Qatari Al-Ahli SC for 20 million euros. It is unlikely that a European club would have offered the same amount. PSG would have collected a total of 179 million euros from the desert. They also made savings on salaries with the departures of Messi, Neymar and Sergio Ramos.
It’s not just PSG
However, they are not the only ones in world football. Chelsea FC received a noticeable number of offers from Saudi Arabia in the summer. Media reports suggested that this also had to do with the new owner. In spring 2022, Todd Boehly bought the London club. But he didn’t do it alone: the private equity company Clearlake Capital Group is also part of the consortium. The Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund (PIF) is a major investor there.
During the Boehly era, the Blues spent almost a billion euros on transfers. Some of the expensive purchases were “written off” using an accounting trick. The Ukrainian winger Mykhaylo Mudryk received an unusual contract length of eight and a half years. And the same trick is used as at PSG: Chelsea transferred players to Saudi Arabia for a total of 41.5 million euros. In the end, both sides benefit: the Londoners can reduce their overcrowded squad, polish up the FFP and the Saudi league gets more talented players like N’Golo Kanté.
This is also paying off for other Premier League clubs. Liverpool FC paid off the departure of three old stars Roberto Firmino, Jordan Henderson and Fabinho – and thus earned 60 million euros. Instead, the Reds around coach Jürgen Klopp built a new midfield with the money they raised. But they haven’t accepted every offer: The 100 million euros that were allegedly offered from Saudi Arabia for Mo Salah have not yet convinced Liverpool.