According to Hugo Guillemet, journalist at L'Equipe, Paris Saint-Germain distorts the French championship by making up its deficit each year thanks to a sovereign fund.
In the program “L'Equipe du Soir”, several journalists and consultants had the opportunity to debate the place of Olympique Lyonnais in the French championship. According to two of them, Les Gones are distorting Ligue 1, because the club carried out a transfer window with nearly 150 million euros spent last summer while it was in a net deficit. For Hugo Guillemet, journalist at L'Equipe and faithful observer of Olympique Lyonnais, John Textor's club is not the right target in this debate. According to him, we should rather look at what Paris Saint-Germain is doing to see what a club that distorts the championship really is.
PSG has been distorting Ligue 1 since 2011
The takeover of Paris Saint-Germain by Qatar in 2011 completely reshuffled the cards in Ligue 1. Historically, there has never been major domination by a single club in the French championship, apart from brilliant OL of Jean-Michel Aulas between 2002 and 2008. Since then, very lucky the club which manages to dethrone PSG for one season. Only Monaco and Lille have achieved this feat since the first Parisian title of the Qatari era in 2013. Every summer, the capital club has been spendthrift to perfect its squad. A state of affairs which has no consequences since the sovereign fund at the head of the club makes up the deficit. For Hugo Guillemet, Paris Saint-Germain is the only team that can really do anything and everything to win Ligue 1.
« OL is distorting the championship? They are fifth. Are they overperforming? It's OL, with the means we know, they are in their place. Buying players in transfer windows, Lyon has always done it. OL's structural deficit has been there since 2018-2019, all Ligue 1 clubs have a structural deficit apart from Paris Saint-Germain. If there is a club which has distorted the championship since 2011, it is PSG with a sovereign fund which abounds each year with 200 million euros to make up the deficit », denounces the journalist from L’Equipe. Whatever the case, OL are in a critical situation which goes well beyond this type of debate. With a deficit of almost more than 500 million euros, the club will have to find miraculous solutions to prevent the DNCG from confirming its decision to administratively demote Les Gones to Ligue 2.
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