- Revealed: how PSG are funding their attempt to buy the Champions League
- What steps can Arsenal take to win the League next season?
By Tony Attwood
The total market value of PSG players according to TransferMarkt is €923.50m. The club second in the French top division at the moment has a squad valued by the same site at €285.30m. And yes Swiss Ramble tells us that PSG “spent a massive €455m on player purchases in 2023/24” As they say, just measuring one year and again taking TransferMarkt as a source, they were ahead of Marseille who spent €103m, Monaco spending €85m, Rennes with €84m paid for players and Lyon who spent €80m.
Put another way, PSG are light years away from the rest of the French League but go on spending in order to buy the Champions League. And I am not sure that this is where or how I want the Champions League to be, with clubs becoming so utterly dominant in their domestic league that they are now spending more and more and more to try and win a trophy via a club that has no relationship to the rest of their country.
PSG are in fact simply a “Let’s win the Champions League” team. And what is the point of that? Arsenal have played 11 Champions League games this season and this will be number 12. There is obviously the replay in France to come (which takes us to 13) and if we win over the two legs there will be game 14, the final. But Arsenal still focus on the League.
But PSG are different. They expect to win the league, and so have spent around 1 billion euros in order to buy a team that can get through 14 games – but might not. The French league is now irrelevant – they expect and quite probably demand to win it. Heads will roll if they don’t.
Now this situation does give a bit of an advantage to Arsenal who have to work hard to win their matches in the domestic league as well as in the Champions League. But let’s compare the two clubs in this competition… This is what Arsenal have done….
| Date | Match | Result | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Sep 2024 | Atalanta v Arsenal | D | 0-0 |
| 1 Oct 2024 | Arsenal v Paris St Germain | W | 2-0 |
| 22 Oct 2024 | Arsenal v Shakhtar Donetsk | W | 1-0 |
| 6 Nov 2024 | Internazionale v Arsenal | L | 1-0 |
| 26 Nov 2024 | Sporting Clube Portugal v Arsenal | W | 1-5 |
| 11 Dec 2024 | Arsenal v AS Monaco | W | 3-0 |
| 22 Jan 2025 | Arsenal v Dinamo Zagreb | W | 3-0 |
| 29 Jan 2025 | Girona v Arsenal | W | 1-2 |
| 4 Mar 2025 | PSV Eindhoven v Arsenal | W | 1-7 |
| 12 Mar 2025 | Arsenal v PSV Eindhoven | D | 2-2 |
| 8 Apr 2025 | Arsenal v Real Madrid | W | 3-0 |
| 16 Apr 2025 | Real Madrid v Arsenal | W | 1-2 |
Nine wins for Arsenal, two draws and one defeat. For PSG it has been eight wins, five defeats, and one draw. Quite a difference.
In terms of goals PSG have scored 30 and conceded 12. For Arsenal is has been 30 goals scored and seven conceded. Arsenal have had two big scoring games – the 5-1 away win against Sporting in Portugal and the 7-1 away win against PSV. Paris had one such game beating Brest 7-0 at home. That was in the play-offs which PSG had to enter because they could only manage to come 15th in the first group round of eight games.
But of course with PSG it is always about money so they have bought ten players costing over 20 million euros each to try and become more competitive this season. But then QSI who own the club is not exactly short of money (although they will be either when we all go over to electric cars or when the oil runs out or when someone realises that having a handful of men owing 99.999% of the wealth of the country ins’t quite right).
Whether it is true that PSG are actually now moving into a low-spending approach to football, which some writers proclaim, will be seen. Certainly, they have spent almost a quarter of a billion euros this seaon alone. And it is almost one billion over the last five campaigns.
And it does make a bit of a mockery of the Champions League which this season included Brest as we noted above. That 7-0 win looks impressive until we realise that Brest’s team cost around five percent of the cost of PSG’s team. Seeing figures like that one begins to wonder what on earth point of this competition is. It is a bit like Arsenal being pitched against Torquay United of the National League South, and Arsenal putting out their full first team.
However, PSG have not spent as much in the transfer market as their European rivals. Their €850m gross spend in the five seasons up to 2023/24 has been comfortably outpaced by Chelsea €2 billion, while three other English clubs splashed out more than €1 billion each (Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United). The French Champions also spent less than Tottenham, Real Madrid and Juventus.
Indeed the French League is not only nonsense in this regard, it is also nonsense given that this sort of investment is being funded by debt and loans worth half a billion Euros – two-thirds to the shareholders. And as so many have pointed out, this is a club that for years was debt-free. One might ask, what is the point, other than publicity and self-aggrandisement for the owners? Which raises the question, do I want to be a part of something that is nothing other than a self-aggrandisement machine for a load of people who were born into wealth, exploit the wealth, and rule a thoroughly undemocratic country? Probably not.
Next time, the team.
