June 28 – Laurent Blanc and Paris Saint-Germain have parted ways as the Parisian club seeks a new direction. Blanc has agreed to a €22 million (£17 million) severance deal. The club have moved quickly to appoint Unai Emery, who left serial Europa League winners Sevilla earlier this summer, as the new manager.
On Monday, PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi said in a club statement that “As we embark on a new chapter in the development of the club, I would like to thank Laurent Blanc for everything he has achieved over the last three years, both in terms of the playing style and results.”
But Al-Khelaifi previously stressed that this season had a sense of failure to it as the French club, for a fourth consecutive time, failed to make it beyond the group stages of the Champions League. He will be expecting Emery to translate his Europa League success to the Champions League.
The Parisians long for European glory. In fact, everything at the club is informed by a crushing sense that the Champions League must be won. Ever since Qatar Sports Investments became a majority shareholder in PSG in 2011, the Champions League has been the club’s sole obsession.
Geopolitics has shaped PSG’s rise: it is a public secret that former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who attended the game last week, lubricated the deal between QSI and PSG in a tale of spine-tingling global politics. Back in 2010, Sarkozy hosted a regal dinner with former UEFA president Michel Platini, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, then crown prince and now the Emir of Qatar, and the Qatari prime minister at the Élysée Palace, right on the eve of the host announcement for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Sarkozy implored Platini, then a powerful FIFA Executive Committee member, to vote for Qatar. In Germany, Angela Merkel infamously called German legend Franz Beckenbauer to vote for the tiny gulf nation as well. Platini duly switched his allegiance from the USA, one of Qatar’s rivals in the bidding for the 2022 World Cup, to Qatar. Six months later QSI bought PSG, alongside a swathe of lucrative trade deals between France and Qatar.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi is the strongman at PSG. The club’s president, who also chairs TV channel beIN Sports and Qatargas, goes back a long way with the Qatari emir Al-Thani. They played tennis together as boys. Al-Khelaifi dreams big – ‘Revons plus grand (Dream Bigger)’ is after all one of PSG’s slogans.
In France, PSG are serial champions, with a near-divine right to first spot. Coach Laurent Blanc has built a solid team around a nucleus of players: Brazilian defender Thiago Silva, Italian midfielder Marco Verratti and striker Zoltan Ibrahimovic, who left at the end of this season with his presumed destination Manchester United.
In March, they won a fourth consecutive domestic title with two months to spare following a 9-0 victory at Troyes. For PSG, there is nothing left to conquer at home. That lack of domestic competitiveness may harm the Parisians in the long run. They are in danger of becoming a self-parody: every season is a neat, but frighteningly identical reproduction of the previous campaign – utter domestic supremacy jostled by European elimination in the quarterfinals.
Now PSG has decided to take a new path. Blanc’s severance deal of €22million is generous and acknowledges his contribution. The former French international, who won the World Cup with Les Bleus in 1998, coached France from 2010-12 and took over from Carlo Ancelotti at PSG in 2013. Last February, he had extended his contract for another two years.
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