PSG’s performance and financial successes in Europe of late.

 

• What happens now about the 110+ charges levelled against ManC and its ex-manager?
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By Tony Attwood

And so moving on to the next match, as we know, Arsenal and PSG have not played each other very much.  Seven times in all.   Two games in the Cup Winners’ Cup and five in the Champions League.   Arsenal have won just two of these matches, but then PSG have also won just two.   The only problem is that the two PSG victories were the last two games we played against them.

Neither side has ever scored more than two goals in a game, and in fact, in the majority of the games, the top-scoring team or teams have delivered just one goal.  I don’t think the media wants me to report that.  Here’s the list…

 

 

So, as we can see, it is not going to be easy, but I guess we knew that anyway.   However, the table below gives a further breakdown and shows that while PSG took over the dominance of the French league in 2012/13, this league was still lingering behind the top leagues in Europe.  Indeed, it took PSG until 2019/20 to catch up with the rest of Europe (despite their dominance in France_ and get to the final of the Champions League 

 

Season	Lge Pos	Cup	Champ Lge	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD
2007–08	16th	RU		49	20	13	16	60	51	+9
2008–09	6th	R16	QF	57	29	12	16	74	54	+20
2009–10	13th	W		46	18	12	16	62	48	+14
2010–11	4th	RU	R16	60	26	22	12	96	63	+33
2011–12	2nd	QF	GS	51	31	11	9	99	55	+44
2012–13	1st	QF	QF	54	35	13	6	101	36	+65
2013–14	1st	R32	QF	55	40	9	6	126	41	+85
2014–15	1st	W	QF	59	39	14	6	122	54	+68
2015–16	1st	W	QF	59	47	8	4	143	31	+112
2016–17	2nd	W	R16	57	42	9	6	141	44	+97
2017–18	1st	W	R16	57	45	6	6	171	48	+123
2018–19	1st	RU	R16	55	40	7	8	149	52	+97
2019–20	1st	W	RU	49	40	4	5	136	35	+101
2020–21	2nd	W	SF	57	38	6	13	126	46	+80
2021–22	1st	R16	R16	50	32	11	7	112	48	+64
2022–23	1st	R16	R16	50	34	6	10	120	53	+67
2023–24	1st	W	SF	53	34	12	7	124	52	+72
2024–25	1st	W	W	65	48	8	9	168	59	+109

 

So what we can also see is that last season was PSG’s best season ever.   They won the League and Cup double for the second time in succession, and also won the Champions League.  But more than that, they reached a club goal-scoring record of 168 goals in a season.   This worked out at 2.58 goals per game, beating the previous season’s achievement of 2.33 goals per game.

This didn’t quite reach the average of three goals a game record achieved a few seasons earlier, but there were more Champions League games as the years passed, and this made things harder.

PSG, like other utterly dominant forces in domestic leagues, has therefore a benefit and a disadvantage arising from their position of dominance.  The benefit of the course is that they can have a parade and celebrations each season for winning things.  The disadvantage is that winning their own national trophies becomes far too easy.

This situation means that with virtually every league and domestic cup game, the club is an absolute certainty to come out as winners, and the players are hardly tested.   So when they meet a top European team, they can find it harder to make progress.  It took them 14 years of consecutive participation in the Champions League to reach the final.

Obviously, they can utterly dominate the French league, and just in Germany, it is virtually impossible to find anyone who will take a bet on Bayern Munich winning that league, so it is in France.  We already know next season’s winners.

This of course, was the danger that the Premier League faced with the Mancs and was only averted by the announcement (although not the punishment notice) of being guilty of 110+ breaches of the financial regulations. 

However, Paris St-Germain was one of eight clubs to be fined by Uefa, for spending more on transfers than the club generated in income. But the fine was trivial (10m euros), although there is a threat of paying another 65m euros if they do it again.  PSG thus joined the elite group of clubs being “monitored” ever since, along with Chelsea, Leicester, Manchester City (of course – and this “of course” is by Uefa, not by the League for the breaches of its regulations), West Ham United and Rangers.

Where a club refuses or claims it cannot pay a fine immediately to Uefa, the money is taken from any future revenue that the club earns in terms of “prize money” etc from Uefa competitions.  So UEFA gets it back one way or another.

Which means if you ever hear a club’s supporters booing the name of Uefa it is probably because the club thought they could get away with spending anything they wanted, and were then caught.