A League of One

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/sports/soccer/in-france-paris-st-germain-is-a-league-apart.html

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PARIS — One day last week, David Beckham clogged foot traffic on the Champs-Élysées when he made a promotional appearance at the Adidas store. Wearing bright yellow sneakers and his seemingly indefatigable smile, Beckham was like catnip for tourists and locals alike as they walked past the majesty of the nearby Arc de Triomphe and crowded a cramped storefront instead, hoping to snap a camera-phone picture of soccer’s perpetually coifed superstar.

This sort of attention has been standard for Beckham for years now, of course, and so it was in France as it was in England, Italy and the United States before. But while Beckham’s move to Paris St.-Germain in January created the expected buzz — and surely will not hurt Victoria Beckham’s involvement in the French fashion industry — it is barely a footnote in the larger narrative about a controversial and divisive shift in the overall philosophy of one of Europe’s most significant clubs.

Put simply: P.S.G. suddenly has a credit card with no limit. This is hardly unique in European soccer — soccer teams seem to be the new plaything for oligarchs and Middle Eastern consortiums these days — but when a group known as Qatar Sports Investment took over P.S.G. in 2011, its cash flow rocketed the bankroll into a dimension previously unseen in the more modest surroundings of the French league.

In the past, quality players would typically make a name in France and then leave for fame and fortune in England or Spain; now, suddenly, P.S.G. is star-shopping with abandon, signing players like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Javier Pastore, Thiago Silva, Lucas and, yes, even Beckham, in an effort to become a European powerhouse akin to Real Madrid and Manchester United. Since 2011, P.S.G. has spent more than €250 million (about $325 million) on players, with designs on another spree this summer that could include the Manchester United star Wayne Rooney. The results have followed, too; on Wednesday, P.S.G. advanced to the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League after a 1-1 tie with Valencia gave it a 3-2 aggregate victory.

“What P.S.G. is interested in being is not the best team in France — it is the best team internationally,” Lilian Thuram, a former French national team player, said through an interpreter. “But there is a danger. The danger is the absence of competition. If P.S.G. has such an advantage, the competition doesn’t really exist and there is no drama. Without drama, people lose interest.”

That sentiment — which is shared by many — also presupposes a larger point: that is, that there was significant interest to begin with. While outsiders might assume that Parisians are soccer fanatics because France is in Europe and Europeans, generally, love soccer, the dots have never connected; P.S.G. is actually the second-most popular team in France (behind Marseille).

“P.S.G. has never really mobilized Paris the way English clubs do in their cities,” said Laurent Dubois, a professor at Duke who writes on French soccer. As a comparison, consider that Paris has one professional club playing in its country’s top two divisions while London has nine.

“In France, a lot of the intellectual elite sort of look down on soccer,” Dubois added. “There’s a slight phenomenon of snobbery around soccer in France. There are so many other things people would rather talk about.”

Given that, the Qataris’ strategy is more understandable — though not necessarily any more palatable for that segment of enthusiastic P.S.G. fans that does exist. By focusing on its standing abroad (as opposed to in France), the club is seeking — in the words of one longtime P.S.G. supporter — to bypass the local fan.

Already, there have been changes in how the team prices its seats and locates its fans at its stadium, Parc des Princes. The team has also changed its logo — a disappointing decision for many of its most devoted fans but symbolic, in many ways, of the larger separation between Paris’s team and Parisians.

“Since the Qataris have invested, what the club’s leadership is doing is taking a popular, down-to-earth football club and transforming it into a pack of laundry detergent,” said Christophe Uldry, 38, who is the former head of a top P.S.G. fan organization. “They want to make it the most attractive packaging to as many people as possible, so they’re changing the logo, the shirts, etc. What they’re doing now is making a marketing product.”

Three years ago, Uldry was part of the group known as Supras Auteuil, an influential cadre of ultras, as they were known, who were some of the most strident fans of P.S.G. The group was dissolved in 2010, however, according to Uldry, when the club, and the French government, sought to crack down on all fan groups after a spectator was killed at a match. When the Qataris then took over, Uldry said, there was no engagement with any of the fan groups and ticket prices at Parc des Princes are now such that they are “only available to a certain population.”

“It’s become a club for the elite,” he added.

To some observers, that may be simply the current reality of top-tier soccer; after all, fans at Manchester United and Chelsea, among others, might echo Uldry’s sentiment. The main difference with P.S.G., however, is the lack of a strong domestic foundation around the club.

English clubs will always have a main focus on winning the English league; Spanish clubs will feel the same. In France, P.S.G.’s spending opens a chasm so wide that it may ultimately do more harm than good for the French league in the long term.

Philippe Auclair, an author who has written on French soccer, categorized the overall financial condition of French soccer as in “a terrible state.”

“Attendances are declining,” Auclair said. “Broadcast rights have gone down. French clubs depend far more on broadcasting rights than English clubs, and the division of money in France is not as democratic for the smaller clubs as it is in other countries.”

What that means, according to Auclair, is that an unsustainable tier system has developed in the 20-team league. There also seems to be little interest from P.S.G. in developing French players — they are simply interested in signing the best players anywhere, period — as well as a general disregard for the state of the sport within the country.

When P.S.G. was beaten in a French league match recently, for example, the team’s director of football, Leonardo, dismissed the result, saying that P.S.G.’s team is “based on talent and quality of passes” and therefore “made to play in Europe rather than” the French League.

The comment was not necessarily appreciated by P.S.G. management, which is particularly conscious of its image, but it was also reflective of P.S.G.’s odd juxtapositions: the team wants to win, but not necessarily in France. It wants attention but not necessarily from Parisians. And it wants stars but not necessarily only the on-the-field soccer variety.

That is where Beckham comes in. He has said he will donate his P.S.G. salary to a local charity, and he readily admits that part of the team’s interest in a 37-year-old English veteran like him is that he will sell plenty of P.S.G. shirts in previously untapped markets like Asia and South America. Playing in Paris helps his personal brand, too, though it must be said that he still has ability. Beckham has played well in three appearances for P.S.G. and, though he did not play Wednesday, he danced around on the sideline with the rest of the players after Ezequiel Lavezzi scored for P.S.G. in the 66th minute.

It was a big night for P.S.G., a prime European night, and the club will surely be pleased that it is one of only eight teams still competing for the continent’s top prize. Games like this one, and trophies like that one, are at the heart of the Qatari quest: to make Paris’s team something much, much bigger.

“They may well go on in the Champions League and it may well kill the bread and butter of French football,” Auclair said. “But, frankly, I don’t think that is something that concerns P.S.G. right now.”

<NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Hannah Olivennes contributed reporting.