Paris Saint-Germain: First Time in the Final

When we first arrived in Paris, I was happy to support the local soccer team, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). The team was on the upswing, having just started a streak of winning their domestic league, Ligue 1, twice in a row. Since then, the team has won every year except 2016-17, when they were runners up to Monaco. And while this was a cause for celebration, it was also a sign that perhaps the team should be looking beyond Ligue 1.

All those Ligue 1 results never brought a really successful result in the UEFA Champions League. The two legs of the quarterfinals proved to be the impassable stage which stopped PSG from reaching its European aspirations time and time again. Several times, the team found itself up against top teams in the Round of 16, and were stopped there before even making it to the next round. This includes the infamous two legs played in 2017 against Barcelona, in which PSG won the first match 4-0, but then lost the second 6-1. All of these performances served as fuel for critics of the French league, which they describe as a league much lower in competition or ability compared to the other top leagues in Europe.

As a relative newcomer to Paris, I have to agree with the critics. Ligue 1 is not at all competitive. Each year, Paris Saint-Germain is determined as the winner well before the end of the season. This is in large part because of the new Qatari owners of the club, who are able to invest a lot of money into the team, especially in the form of world-class players, the most famous of which would be Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.

I agree that the French league is not competitive. It’s the main reason that I don’t follow PSG very closely. There isn’t really a point in watching Ligue 1 matches, because the result is a foregone conclusion. Sadly, Ligue 1 is not alone in this aspect. Juventus has won Serie A every year since 2011-12, Bayern Munich has won the Bundesliga every year since 2012-13, and La Liga has been a contest between Barcelona and Real Madrid for years. The Premier League stands out as being very competitive in comparison, with only Manchester City able to successfully defend their title in 2018-19.

The solution is obvious to me. Paris needs more than one big team. Of all the big leagues, most have divided their biggest cities into several clubs. Madrid has both Atletico and Real, Rome has Lazio and Roma, Berlin has Hertha and Union, and London has a plethora of teams currently in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Tottenham, and West Ham. If you have a country with one main city, it doesn’t make sense for that city to have just one team, eating up all that market share.

France is definitely such a country. Paris is by far the biggest city in France. More importantly, the Île-de-France region which makes up the Paris metropolitan area, is growing, and there are no big football clubs in the whole region besides Paris Saint-Germain. If I were to pick two other locations suitable for a team, I would pick the Seine-Saint-Denis department North of Paris, with a rising immigrant population. I’m not sure what ticket sales would look like in a poorer immigrant community, but the area definitely has the population to support a decent-sized fanbase. I would also propose another team in the suburbs South of Paris, a place like the Massy-Palaiseau area. There is a large population there and it is a hub. There could be even more teams, but those are some basic options.

There are actually a couple of smaller teams in the area. Currently, Red Star plays in Saint-Ouen, but they recently moved down from Ligue 2 to the Championnat National. Paris FC also narrowly avoided relegation from Ligue 2 this season, and now has the Kingdom of Bahrain as a minority shareholder, so it appears that there are investors who feel that the Paris area can handle multiple big teams. Hopefully they can use that as fuel to make a run at a top Ligue 2 finish and a move to Ligue 1.

At any rate, this year Paris-Saint Germain have carried the hopes of the entire city to the UEFA Champions League Final, after coming from behind to beat Borussia Dortmund as well as Atalanta. The semifinal match against Leipzig was a good showing for them, but they will have their hands full against a very powerful Bayern Munich side which is almost impossible to defend. The French will be ecstatic if they manage to win the championship, but even getting this far is a new record for the club, and Parisian fans are already happy with their club. Whatever the outcome, I hope that Ligue 1 becomes more competitive, and that the Parisian area can bring more top clubs into the mix.