Archive for the ‘Paris Saint-Germain’ Category

Lyttleton: Marseille’s love of Barton may have a lot to do with Marseille’s distaste for Paris

Posted by Ben Lyttleton under Joey Barton, Marseille, Paris Saint-Germain on Apr 11, 2013

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It’s an easy way to win over Marseille fans—slagging off anyone or anything connected to Paris Saint-Germain—but the truth is, everyone connected to Marseille loved Joey Barton before he called Thiago Silva an “over-rated Brazilian” and “ladyboy” on Twitter last week.

Barton basked in the ovation he received when he came on as a substitute in Marseille’s 1-0 win over Bordeaux last weekend. It was his first game since his latest high-profile Twitter row with the Brazilian defender, who riled up the midfielder with an interview in L’Equipe in which he talked about Barton but refused to mention his name.

“There’s a Marseille player whose name I don’t recall, he’s English, who has been speaking badly about Neymar and about Brazilian football in general and even about Beckham and Ibra,” Silva said.

“The thing is, no-one speaks about him, so it must amuse him to perhaps spit on great players so that people know that he exists. What this guy should never forget is that there are more stars on the Brazil jersey than on any other football shirt. It makes me want to win [the World Cup] even more to shut that Englishman up. What does he know about Brazilian football? I don’t remember having played against him for the national team.”

At that stage, Barton would have been wise to keep quiet, as he had clearly got under Silva’s skin. But that is not the Barton way. As he put it in a rare interview with Sport & Style magazine last week: “Being on Twitter is like giving a box of matches to an arsonist but at the same time, it’s done me a lot of good because without having a journalist in front of you who already has an idea of what he wants to write, you’re able to control the message: and that’s me.
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PSG hint at possible legal action over Joey Barton’s “FatBoy” remarks on Thiago Silva

Posted by Richard Whittall under Joey Barton, Paris Saint-Germain on Apr 03, 2013

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Paris Saint-Germain aren’t exactly pleased with Joseph Barton’s crass opinion on Brazilian centre-back Thiago Silva. The Ligue 1 club released a terse statement that included this statement: “Thiago Silva et le Paris Saint-Germain se réservent le droit d’intenter toute action qu’ils jugeront nécessaire,” or Thiago Silva and PSG reserve the right to take any action they judge is necessary” in response.

The statement also asserts the remarks go beyond mere “verbal jousting” and are “serious attacks.” I’ve heard PSG’s owners aren’t afraid of sending a cease and desist letter now and again; lets hope Barton finally gets the message.

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Rob Beal, source on the DFL story, was given cease and desist letter for selling quotes related to Beckham to PSG in 2011

Posted by Richard Whittall under Paris Saint-Germain on Mar 15, 2013

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A high up source within the Qatar Sports Investment (QSI) group, owners of PSG and according the Times report the “prime movers” behind the DFL, has just confirmed to me that the organization sent a cease and desist letter to Rob Beal—a source in the Oliver Kay story—in 2011 for falsely purporting to be a spokesmen for the club in an attempt to sell information related to rumours that David Beckham was on his way to Paris.

The source has a copy of the letter which Beal attempted to sell to various journalists in 2011. In it, he details how PSG was pleased to welcome Beckham and his family, and asked that quotes “only be used by media groups in France and the UK” and be attributed only to Beal’s group at the time. The source told me the letter looked flimsy, but that she says it’s possible it ended up reported on by more than one outlet as hard news.

You’ll recall the initial Times story said that QSI-owned PSG were “the prime movers” behind the Dream Football League.

Since beginning this story I have been inundated from off the record reports that Beal has a history of peddling false information to journalists, lately related to French football. Earlier today, the Times football editor Tony Evans told me that they stood by the story “…despite the involvement of Beal.”

“Despite the involvement of Beal”—a man who claims to work for an Paris-based media organization in France despite several eye-witness accounts he is permanently based in Sheffield, and who once attempted to pose as a spokesman for QSI in 2011 and profit from lucrative inside information.

No other sources have come forward to back up the DFL story…

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PSG, QSI say the Times, Oliver Kay never contacted them about Dream Football League

Posted by Richard Whittall under Dream Football League, Paris Saint-Germain on Mar 15, 2013

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Earlier today, Tony Evans told me that Oliver Kay was working on this story for the Times “for weeks” in contact with top officials at various football clubs. The Times follow up article to the DFL story said as follows:

Paris Saint-Germain, owned by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), are known to be in favour [of the DFL], but, reassuringly for those who consider the proposal to be a nightmarish vision, it has yet to gain traction among European football’s establishment.

I just got off the phone with a media representative for Nasser Al Khelaifi, the chairman of PSG-QSI. He said, unequivocally, that no one had ever been in any contact with anyone from the club in relation to this story, except for a Sky Sports reporter on Wednesday once the DFL story broke. That includes Oliver Kay. They had not heard of any plan of this nature prior to Wednesday. They have not heard from anyone connected to the Times in relation to a follow up since.

The person in question also spoke to this statement in the Times follow up report:

While the DFL concept might appeal to the capitalist tendencies of the Glazer family, who own United, the club’s hierarchy in Manchester — led by David Gill, who will continue to exert strong influence when he stands down as chief executive in June — are vehemently opposed to such plans.

Gill recently stood down from his position on the board of the ECA, to be replaced by Ivan Gazidis, the Arsenal chief executive, as he pursues a place on the Uefa executive committee in an attempt to gain more influence for himself and England in European football’s corridors of power. Gill’s position is heavily pro-establishment, with a strong desire to protect the status quo and in particular a competition structure that Uefa wish to safeguard.

The establishment position was reflected at last month’s ECA general assembly in Doha, when PSG officials were explicitly warned, about the dangers of an aggressive approach not just to expenditure but on strategic issues.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the Bayern and ECA chairman, specifically told the PSG delegation: “What you are doing is not positive for football.”

Rummenigge warned the PSG delegation of the need to realise that self- interest of one or two clubs cannot be allowed to overrun an organisation representing 207 clubs from 53 associations. When an internal survey was held about the future of the Champions League and Europa League, 75 per cent expressed “satisfaction of extreme satisfaction” with the existing format, which figures such as Rummenigge regard as a powerful rebuttal of threats to the club competition structure.

The PSG-QSI spokesman not only denied this, but they said the only PSG representative presentin Doha (and they can confirm this) was the club financial manager (not a person in any position to speak on these matters), who said he never had this conversation with the chairman. He said the above account was a complete fantasy.

Of course this could be an elaborate conspiracy. But then if it is, both Manchester United, PSG, QSI and the Qatar FA are going to look awfully foolish once, as Evans promised me, “the truth comes out” and a league dreamed up on a French website turns out to be real.

There’s more…I’m awaiting confirmation. Stay tuned (I hope)…

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Smoking in the press box at Paris Saint-Germain

Posted by Richard Whittall under Paris Saint-Germain on Mar 06, 2013

Some cliches die hard and this would appear to be one of them. Most interesting thing from a bit of a dire Champions League match.

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Beckham brings his Goldenballs to Paris

Posted by Richard Whittall under David Beckham, Paris Saint-Germain on Jan 31, 2013

Remember last January when everyone bought those PSG shirts with Beckham on the back when all those rumours of some mad transfer were circulating? And maybe they felt a bit silly, and so either sold them quickly on eBay or held on to them in the vain hope that one day they might become a collector’s item?

Well, they can relax a little this morning:

David Beckham is expected to complete a lucrative move to Paris Saint-Germain on Thursday after choosing the Qatar-owned club ahead of 11 rival offers.

The 37-year-old midfielder is in Paris for a medical, and is expected to be unveiled at a press conference at 4pm on Thursday.

The former England captain is understood to have received offers from Europe, South America, North America, South Africa, Russia, China and the Middle East since he left Los Angeles Galaxy before Christmas.

I’ve always wanted to believe PSG was, at its core, a football club. But with a bona fide mascot, this club is quickly becoming a Baudrillard-esque parody, a footballing simulacra. Jean would no doubt be a fan. Here’s hoping we’ll see Becks vomiting on a variety of Ligue 1 touchlines this Spring…

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Horncastle: Lucas Moura hopes to emulate Raí’s success at Paris Saint-Germain

Posted by James Horncastle under Paris Saint-Germain on Jan 09, 2013

Some forgot that when Paris Saint-Germain bought Lucas Moura from São Paulo in the summer and agreed to allow the player to stay in Brazil for a further six months before moving to France in the winter, it was not without precedent in the team’s history.

Two decades ago, a similar deal was struck between the same two clubs for a different player: Raí. Except, of course, he instead agreed his transfer in the winter of 1992 only to then join the following summer once he’d fulfilled his promise to win the Copa Libertadores with São Paulo for a second consecutive season, win the Intercontinental Cup, and to qualify Brazil for the next World Cup in the United States.

Raí, at that time the South American Player of the Year, would prove to be worth the wait. The question is: will Lucas? Perhaps that’s an unfair standard by which to judge him. At least for now.

For it’s not as though Lucas isn’t burdened enough already by the pressure and expectation that comes with justifying the €40m initially spent by Paris Saint-Germain to gazump Manchester United and secure his signature, a fee for a “19-year-old boy” that led Sir Alex Ferguson to argue that “the game’s gone mad.”

Because, irrespective of the money involved, emulating Raí—who ranks alongside Safet Sušić as the club’s greatest ever player—is a tall order even if, considering the wealth available to Paris Saint-Germain, they are capable of putting Lucas in a position to eclipse the palmares that he achieved at the club; namely a league title in his first season, the Coupe de France on two occasions, the League Cup and, most famously of all, the only European honor in the trophy cabinet at the Parc des Princes, the Cup Winners’ Cup.
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