LWill the anomaly be repaired soon? With the entry of Agache, the holding company of the Arnault family, into exclusive negotiations to acquire a majority stake in Paris FC, a “second big club” from the capital could finally evolve in the elite of national football, and compete with the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).
Paris is, in fact, one of the rare major European cities to have only one first division team, the development of the football economy in recent decades having changed nothing.
The anomaly, however, is not really one in a country where this sport has never had the same importance as our neighbors, and where no other large city has two elite teams. With funding largely provided, after the war, by municipalities, their subsidies were reserved for a single team, encouraging mergers.
The explanation according to which the leisure offer in Paris limits the attractiveness of football is doubtful, given that this is a metropolis of 11 million inhabitants. At the beginning of the 20the century, pioneer clubs abounded there, to the point of winning the first six editions of the Coupe de France created in 1918.
Doumeng, Lagardère, Afflelou, Arnault
In the modern era, there has been no shortage of attempts to relaunch venerable institutions, such as the Racing Club de France, taken over in the 1980s by the industrialist Jean-Luc Lagardère and his Matra group. Renamed Racing Paris 1, then Matra Racing, the club, despite investments and stars, returned to anonymity at the end of the decade.
The chimerical “second big club” in Paris is definitely a tycoon's dream, since in 1967 Jean-Baptiste Doumeng, the “red billionaire”, presided over the improbable and disastrous merger of Red Star and… Toulouse FC.
At the end of the 1990s, while the State was looking for a resident club for the Stade de France, PSG having declined the proposal, makeshift applications multiplied, such as those of Saint-Denis Saint-Leu, the US Créteil (chaired by Alain Afflelou), Racing or Red Star. The latter, by abandoning a project for a new stadium in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis), lets go of the prey for the shadows and falls back into limbo.
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Today, Red Star plays in Ligue 2 in a Bauer stadium, in Saint-Ouen, currently being renovated, the capacity of which will be increased to 10,000 seats. But its owner, the 777 Partners fund, a fan of multi-ownership of clubs, went bankrupt.
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