PSG-Toulouse, at the Parc des Princes five months late, will be shunned by the ultras

Generally organized in the heart of summer, and rather confidential, the Champions Trophy is making headlines this season, and not necessarily for good reasons. This competition sees the champion team of Ligue 1 and the team that won the Coupe de France clash in a single match. This year, the meeting, which takes place in the middle of winter, on January 3 at 8:45 p.m. at the Parc des Princes, in Paris, and pits Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) against Toulouse Football Club (TFC), arouses several controversies.

The match was to be organized in Bangkok on August 5, a few days before the resumption of Ligue 1, as in previous years. The Professional Football League (LFP) had planned this relocation to increase the visibility of French football in Southeast Asia, after three editions in China (in 2014, 2018 and 2019). But the Thai organizer of the event, the Fresh Air Festival group, finally gave up on organizing it, officially because of the health problems of the daughter of King Rama League finally announced, on 1^er December, that the match would be held at the Parc des Princes, PSG’s usual venue.

The organization of the match on the ground of one of the two opponents constitutes an anomaly in the history of the Champions Trophy, created in 1955 and relaunched in 1997 after several interruptions. Traditionally played on neutral ground, this meeting was a laboratory for the international opening decided by the League in 2009. Thus, the competition traveled to North America, the Maghreb and Israel in 2022. Since 2009, only the edition 2020 was organized on French soil, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. PSG and Olympique de Marseille then moved to Lens. In May, the TFC offered to host the event at the Toulouse Stadium, but the League did not follow up on this option.

An unjustified advantage

This relocation to Paris ended up being unanimously against her. On December 15, the Collectif Ultras Paris announced that it would not be present during the Champions Trophy match, denouncing the inability of the LFP to “find a host country”. A boycott also decided three days later by the Tolosa Indians, the main group of Toulouse ultras. “How is it possible to claim to respect sporting fairness by choosing the PSG stadium to host the meeting? »ask the supporters in a press releaseannouncing a gathering on Place Saint-Pierre in Toulouse to follow the meeting.

The fact of organizing the match at the Parc des Princes is seen by Toulouse supporters as an unjustified advantage granted to the French champion, to the detriment of TFC, currently sixteenth in Ligue 1, which has a budget fourteen times lower than that of PSG. The Toulouse ultras also denounce the low number of places granted to them in the stands of the Parc des Princes, while only the Boulogne stand has been reserved for traveling supporters.

According to a count carried out by the X account @Combiendeplaces, only 13.6% of the places at the Parc des Princes were allocated to Toulouse fans. The rest of the tickets were available for sale to the general public, but on the PSG website. “Imagine we play against Marseille at the Vélodrome. I think it would have been bad for me to have had to buy my tickets on the OM website”explains an avid PSG supporter, who says ” to understand “ the boycott of the match by the Toulouse ultras.

“We have set several conditions for the organization of this match in France. A neutral stadium was needed, with a neutral protocol. Then, we asked for neutral ticketing so that there could be the same number of supporters from both camps, even if I am not naive and I know very well that there will be a large number of PSG supporters . These conditions were respected”said the president of the TFC, Damien Comolli, at a press conference on December 21.

Fifteen euros more than for a trip to Ligue 1

Supporters of the two clubs also denounce the price of tickets for a match which, certainly, offers a title, but whose stakes and prestige remain limited compared to those of the championship and the Coupe de France. For the general public as well as for Parisian subscribers, the cheapest place was sold at 25 euros (to which must be added 3 euros in processing fees for places purchased on the PSG website), i.e. 15 euros more than the price. corresponding to a classic trip to Ligue 1.

Parisian supporters highlight the gap compared to the trip they made to Dortmund (North Rhine-Westphalia) in December, for a Champions League match, where the price of visitor tickets was 18.50 euros. This price difference ended up discouraging the ultras of the two clubs, whose absence should be felt in the wings of the Parc des Princes.

If the Champions Trophy was imagined as a showcase for French football on the field, it will also be, this time, on the side of the stands, a mirror of the tense relations between the League and the groups of supporters.