Paris Saint-Germain, who have long been accused of amassing expensive megastars with not enough cohesion or club spirit, are at crisis point amid a fallout with the World Cup winner Lionel Messi and extraordinary demonstrations by angry supporters against club chiefs and outside the Brazilian forward Neymar’s house.
PSG increased security provisions on Thursday after crowds of supporters gathered outside the club this week to protest against what they said was bad management of the Ligue 1 club after the third defeat in the past four home matches, against Lorient on Sunday. After some supporters said they would continue protest actions each night, PSG have increased security outside the club’s headquarters, the training centre and the homes of Neymar, Messi and the Italian midfielder Marco Verratti.
An angry crowd of 400 supporters first gathered at the Qatari-owned club, calling for resignations and the departure of Messi. Then, in extraordinary scenes, about 100 people gathered outside the home of Neymar, who is injured, chanting that he should leave the club, saying: “Neymar get out.”
One PSG supporter told French TV breakfast news: “There have been a whole load of things which left people thinking we can’t stand it any more. The sport is inexistent.” Another said: “We’ve got players who don’t fight for our colours, or respect the club.”
The “Ultras” supporters’ collective issued a long statement criticising the club’s management and president, asking: “Is there still a pilot flying the plane?” They said the club should get rid of “parasite players” and added: “Too many players are here just for the salary and without sporting ambition.”
PSG, one of the highest-spending clubs in Europe since their Qatari owners took over in 2011, have had their worst week in years but still have five matches to play as they try to win Ligue 1. “Even if we’re having one of our worst seasons in years, we absolutely have to win that 11th title for dignity and pride,” the Ultras wrote.
PSG have criticised the actions of supporters who gathered outside the home of Neymar and chanted for him to leave the club. “Paris Saint-Germain most strongly condemns the intolerable and insulting actions of a small group of individuals that took place on Wednesday,” a club statement read. “Whatever the differences of opinion, nothing justifies such actions … The club gives its full support to its players, its staff and all those targeted by such shameful behaviour.”
The anger from supporters comes amid another row this week over Messi, who has been suspended for two weeks – banned from playing or training and with his pay docked – after an unauthorised trip for two days to Saudi Arabia to make a promotional tourism video.
Messi will leave PSG at the end of the season, with his former club, Barcelona, and the US Major League Soccer club Inter Miami among those competing for him, alongside an offer of more than £350m a year from the Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal. Messi had been the target of frustration with PSG fans also chanting for him to leave this week, having recently jeered him in home matches.
“What a waste!” announced the front page of the local paper, Le Parisien, over a picture of Messi. The paper lamented what it called PSG’s current “fiasco”. The Paris sports reporter Dominique Sévérac wrote: “PSG: it’s occasionally about football, but it’s constantly a topsy-turvy circus, overheated, on edge, nonsensical.”
The paper said that if Paris did not win the French title this year, they would at least win the equivalent of an Oscar for “screenplay of the year” with plot twists coming faster than Kylian Mbappé’s runs. It said that PSG had come to symbolise – in spectators’ eyes – a club whose recruitment policy was simply to pile up stars who had “individualist and mercantile approaches”.
But Le Parisien’s sports commentator Benoît Lallement wrote that although club had often been “stigmatised for giving all to its star players and allowing them everything” and been “mocked for being just a constellation of overpaid stars”, its “extraordinary” punishment of Messi could be seen as “authoritarian” when what was needed was a fair form of authority.
The French sports paper L’Équipe saw the sanction of Messi as a “turning point” in the way the club manages their stars.
