PSG manager Unai Emery has this afternoon revealed his surprising opinion that clubs throughout Europe should be ‘grateful’ for the financial might possessed by the Ligue 1 powerhouse.
Made of money
Much has been made over the last couple of seasons of the increasingly exorbitant transfer fees being splashed out by a number of Europe’s top clubs, with many of the opinion that the takeovers of the likes of PSG and Manchester City by wealthy investors are to blame.
The soon-to-be French champions smashed the world-record transfer fee when splashing out a frankly-ridiculous 222 million Euro on Neymar last summer, with the Parisian outfit also set to fork over the second-largest transfer sum of all-time when making Kylian Mbappe’s loan move from AS Monaco permanent this summer.
‘Kingdom under threat’
Speaking in an interview with Spanish outlet Marca earlier today, PSG boss Unai Emery was quick to jump to the defence of his club, though, claiming that the emergence of new footballing heavyweights has challenged the long-established pecking order in Europe:
‘Madrid and Barcelona wanted Kylian, but PSG have the muscle to keep him at a French club and I think the transfer happened for sporting reasons and not financial ones, and that’s something new in this new European order.’
‘The (traditional) clubs see their kingdom under threat (from PSG) and (Manchester) City, who are a team with new-found financial capacity. I think this is good for football, that there are these new teams. Everyone should be grateful.’
Questionable
It should be noted that Emery’s argument seems to be flawed at its base, with the French top-flight a perfect example of the fact that ‘everyone’ is not grateful for PSG’s new found wealth, as the gap between themselves and the smaller Ligue 1 clubs grows markedly larger by the year.