Why will the arrival of Red Bull revolutionize everything at Paris FC?

A second major French club in Paris? The utopian dream should finally take shape. If the presence of Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1 for 30 years is a solitary pleasure, the future sale of Paris FC to the Arnault family holding company, associated with the Austrian group Red Bull in this project, risks shaking things up. Already this summer, the recruitments of Jean-Philippe Krasso and Maxime Lopez demonstrated the new appetite of the club, determined to return to the French first division after 45 years of waiting (the PFC is currently leader of Ligue 2). But with a transfer window expected to swell – a substantial envelope between 100 and 200 million euros should be allocated for the coming years -, and Red Bull’s expertise in the field of sport, there are still enough reasons to dream bigger, even if the club’s sports director, François Ferracci, wants to be measured.

The rest after this ad

«Contrary to certain nonsense that I have heard over the past 24 hours on various media, we have no intention of having a significant winter transfer window, he assured Parisian. We have been building a high quality group for over a year and I certainly have no intention of changing course. We will not have the madness of grandeur that is attributed to us at the risk of moving towards incoherent things.» Avoiding inconsistencies in recruitment, this will be the mission of Red Bull, a reference in the field for several years (note that this is not a case of multiple ownership since the Austrian firm should only hold 15% of the club’s shares). Yesterday, we learned of the appointment of a big name to the post of “director of football activities” of Red Bull, in this case Jürgen Klopp, whose influence will extend to Paris FC. To summarize, the German will supervise the network of affiliated clubs, i.e. RB Leipzig, Red Bull Salzburg (and its Liefering reserve), the New York Red Bulls, RB Bragantino in Brazil, and therefore the PFC. By integrating this new galaxy, it is therefore obvious that the policy of the Ile-de-France club will be more than ever focused on training.

To read
Paris FC makes a big announcement for its winter transfer window

Red Bull, one of the rare cases of fractional ownership success in football

For more than 15 years now, Red Bull’s strategy has revolved around young players with potential, with the aim of extracting juicy capital gains from them. By building a network on several continents, the Austrian group was able to build its own identity, accentuated by the arrival of Ralf Rangnick in 2012. “Youth is a good characteristic to produce attractive, winning football. Our style embodies youth, dynamism and liveliness. Focusing on young people is linked to the philosophy of our game. You have to run a lot, repeat sprints and high-intensity runs, transitions and quick analysis of situations. All of this can be implemented much more quickly with younger players. They recover faster, learn faster”he explained to the Swiss daily Daily Gazette. A guideline that has never deviated since.

The rest after this ad

Making training a future “economical lung» of the PFC, often stripped of its biggest talents (Lassana Diarra, Mamadou Sakho, Hannibal Mejbri for example…), will therefore be one of the major themes of the coming years for Red Bull. In addition to PSG, OL, Monaco and even Stade Rennais, the idea will certainly be to make the Ile-de-France club a new promised land for the region’s big talents, from adolescence onwards. Obviously, the multiple examples of success of “incubators” Red Bull should act as arguments in this quest. In recent years, RB Bragantino has trained several Brazilian internationals like Fabricio Bruno or Claudinho, while Salzburg or Leipzig have produced future stars like Sadio Mané, Dominik Szoboszlai, Erling Haaland and Dayot Upamecano. Not to mention the numerous coaches from the Red Bull development laboratory, such as Marco Rose, Sebastian Hoeness, Oliver Glasner, Julian Nagelsmann and Matthias Jaissle. The PFC, for its part, will certainly dream of creating future French internationals.