482.9 million euros. This is the amount spent by Liverpool during the last summer transfer window. A record amount a guarantee of success? It is clear that after three months of competition, the failure is bitter. Despite the successive arrivals of Hugo Ekitiké (€95M), Alexander Isak (€150M), Florian Wirtz (€130M), Milos Kerkez (€47M) and even Jeremie Frimpong (€40M) – to name a few – the Mersey club never ceases to disappoint. Eleventh in the Premier League after 12 days, Arne Slot’s team seems, in fact, completely lost and the bad choices of the sports management resurface with force. If money does not buy happiness across the Channel, other models offer more guarantees. Starting with that of Paris Saint-Germain, reigning European champion and more determined than ever to use the transfer market more sparingly.
Youth at the heart of the project
“Just because we go to the supermarket a lot doesn’t mean that it’s going to make us good cooks. At PSG, we pay attention to everything, but above all we want to make sure we are going in the right direction, it’s not just about piling on players or endangering the club’s economy, we have responsibilities.recalled, in this capacity, Luis Campos, this Monday, during a round table organized by the club as part of the 50th anniversary of its training center. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past – the time when QSI liked to stack the stars of the football world (Neymar, Messi, Mbappé, etc.) – PSG finally gradually moved away from this aggressive and ultra-spending strategy in the transfer window. More moderate, despite the arrivals of Lucas Chevalier, Renato Marin and Illia Zabarnyi for a check for 103 million euros last summer, the current leader of Ligue 1 is now aiming for a model more focused on its training.
In the presence of Yohan Cabaye, sports director of the training center, and Sabrina Delannoy, deputy sports director of the women’s section, Luis Campos insisted on a point that he has been hammering home since his arrival: bringing training closer to the professional group. “The integration of young people is closer here. We have a staircase, the players go up. And I also go down to have meetings. When the players arrive they are prepared to respond in training”added the former LOSC leader before illustrating this paradigm shift by taking the example of an exchange considered to be founding between Luis Enrique and the educators of the PSG Campus. “The meeting between all the coaches from the training center and Luis Enrique was a very memorable meeting, certainly the best moment for me since I was at PSG, it was a moment of sharing knowledge”.
A 100% Parisian team in the years to come?
“Luis Enrique didn’t say: ‘I’m giving you training exercises or a precise playing system, but I’m going to talk to you about playing principles, possession, what to do with and without the ball.’ He then said: “it’s up to you to create your own exercises based on the profiles you have”, but this process makes it easier to integrate young people into the first team because they are better prepared and the principles are already there. Today, we are starting to see that in our young teams, whether it is in the pressure, the way of keeping the ball”. Convinced of the benefits of this new approach, the 61-year-old Portuguese even formulated a clear wish for the months to come: “with time and a long-term project, we hope to no longer need to go to the transfer market, to pay big transfers. We hope to build a Parisian team with more players from the training center”.
A laudable ambition that is already perceptible within the Parisian workforce. With 151 players currently active at the PSG Campus and 5 Titis who can boast of having worn the club jersey in an official match (Warren Zaire-Emery, Senny Mayulu, Quentin Ndjantou, Ibrahim Mbaye, Mathis Jangéal), the residents of the Parc des Princes reaffirm, weekend after weekend, their desire to place the training center at the heart of the future. A strategy responding, at the same time, to the difficult economic context experienced by French football, particularly after the TV rights fiasco. “It is invisible to many people, but very important to us. Getting young people to play will be good for French football”concluded Luis Campos, more than ever in favor of the idea of developing the Under-23 Championship.
