“PSG Confidential”: A dive into the heart of the mysteries of PSG, with François Vignolle

How did you come up with the idea of ​​working on PSG?

François Vignolle: With Laurent Valdiguié, my co-author, we had already written a book called “Gérald Darmanin, the President’s Black Baron”. We were thinking about another project, and we were observing this daily news from Paris Saint-Germain. We said to ourselves: “But it’s much more than football, PSG“It’s geopolitics, politics, it’s a global brand, it’s also business. So we started with that idea.

Why did you choose this term “barbouzeries” in the subtitle, which we hear almost exclusively linked to PSG? What does it define?

FV: Barbouzeries are occult affairs, carried out by people who are not necessarily friendly. During our investigation, we still met three people sentenced to death by Qatar, for alleged crimes: it was the first time Laurent and I had made an appointment with people sentenced to death. However, we had already worked on sensitive subjects. For us, seeing these three men required a lot of precaution, they no longer go abroad because they are afraid of being brought back to Qatar and being shot.

There is Nasser Al-Khelaïfi’s former butler and handyman, who maintains that he was not paid according to what he did. There is a French consultant, suspected by the Qataris of having used a USB key containing intimate videos of Nasser. He is suspected by Doha of having wanted to monetize intimate videos of Nasser in the United Arab Emirates. Which he denies outright, saying he is the victim of a cabal. And this is how we go from a tale from the Arabian Nights, at the moment when Qatar arrives at PSG, to a spy novel by John Le Carré, with three people whose lives are on borrowed time.

At the time we speak (June 7, editor’s note), the latest news surrounding all matters linked to PSG is the hearing by the General Inspectorate of the National Police as a free witness of Hugues Renson, ex-deputy, in as part of the investigation into Neymar’s transfer in 2017. Can you summarize this case for us?

FV: It’s the summer of 2017, PSG wants to make a big move. He wants the best player, or at least one of the best players in the world at FC Barcelona: Neymar. The Qataris have made this their objective. However, Neymar has a very high release clause, to dissuade other clubs from buying him: 222 million euros. To lift this clause, in principle, it is the player who must first pay. In fact, it is the purchasing club which transfers this sum to its future player so that he can settle his release clause.

But fiscally, in France, this poses a problem because we can consider that it is an advance on salary, which is therefore subject to tax and social security contributions. There, it’s all up in arms at PSG: 222 million euros is already a lot, but if we have to spend, according to their estimates, 70 to 200 million euros more, it’s not just not possible for them.

Starts lobbying work. Jean-Martial Ribes, at the time director of communications for PSG, contacted a close friend called Hugues Renson, then deputy for La République en Marche and vice-president of the National Assembly. He is a PSG fan, he loves the club. By SMS, Hugues Renson has already said several times to Ribes: “If one day there is a job at PSG, I will come straight away, I will leave my post as deputy.” PSG has no more time to waste: Ribes asks it to see with Bercy (the Ministry of Economy and Finance, editor’s note) to find out if it is possible to have an agreement with the tax authorities, in order to not to pay charges on the transfer Renson contacted Gérald Darmanin, at the time Minister of Public Accounts.ultimately, the club did not pay taxes on these 222 million euros. Today, justice is trying to determine whether the club benefited from this tax favor legally without influence peddling.

If we approach the sporting aspect, this 2023-2024 season marked a turning point insofar as the objective of the Champions League was not displayed by management at the start of the season. Do you think this is a big shift in the club’s strategy?

In my opinion, Qatar, however, experienced a little humiliation – even if they don’t tell us – concerning Guardiola’s Champions League victory (in 2022-2023) with Manchester City under the flag of the United Arab Emirates, great rival of Qatar. And they perhaps realized that there had been a big turnover at home: 8 coaches in 13 years. With, in my opinion, an original fault in the management of Carlo Ancelotti, who has just won a new Champions League with Real this year.

FV: Carlo Ancelotti arrives from Chelsea in the winter of 2011-2012. We sold him a large-scale project, with time, a budget perhaps not unlimited but very ambitious… All of this suits him very well. And in March 2013, there was this match at the Auguste-Delaune stadium, for the 27th day of the championship. That day, PSG lost against Reims, which was reduced to 10 men. Lavezzi missed a face-to-face, Ibrahimovic scored a goal then refused for a disputed offside… Football fans know this well: when doesn’t want, it doesn’t want.

Why would PSG have understood this now?

FV: They give me the impression of wanting to bring stability, of wanting to favor a model focused on Île-de-France with their superb center in Poissy. They have a new figure who has his head on his shoulders: Warren Zaire-Emery. They want to rely on the pool of players represented by the region and international recruits ready to blend into a collective. Transfer markets are a little more intelligent, not necessarily to grow from a marketing point of view. They have already won it, the Marketing Champions League, and that could have been detrimental to them. I’m thinking of Vitinha, less bling-bling but who has a good state of mind, a sense of cohesion. And then, they have a great coach with a big character who they hope to install over the long term (Luis Enrique, editor’s note). Next year is the first season without a “megastar” of the caliber of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Lionel Messi, Neymar or Kylian Mbappé. A bit as if to some extent they had pressed the “reset” button.

Kylian Mbappé, in fact, left for Real Madrid, after several years of an unprecedented soap opera which covered PSG with ridicule several times. Doesn’t his case illustrate the whole problem of a club within which we no longer knew very well who really held the power?

FV: Of course. Paris is a big club, but is not an institution, like Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, or Barça. Now that’s what they’re aiming for. To be an institution whose authority can no longer be eroded. It was, sometimes also by Nasser, who exceeded the authority of the coach. Mbappé, along with others, illustrates the fact that at one point he was above it all. But why ? Because he was given full powers. The Emir of Qatar said to himself: Barça had its Messi, Real its Ronaldo, we will have our Mbappé. A few months before the World Cup in Qatar, in April 2022, the emir offered Mbappé’s mother a golden contract, and Mbappé extended it in May 2022 for two years, plus one optional. And the fact of no longer being able to center around Mbappé today forces them to change their sporting strategy since the team had been built for him, around him, which also forces them to change their overall strategy, club level.

Was it difficult working on PSG? Did you expect, at the start of your investigation, to work on so many cases at the same time?

FV: With Laurent, we are not sports journalists even if I love football. We realized that it was difficult to work as a sports journalist on PSG, because everything is padlocked. To get information, it’s complicated, you have a match to chronicle. It’s always the same thing, in Paris as elsewhere: “If you mess with us, you won’t have any more information.” For us, it was an advantage and a disadvantage. Disadvantage, because we had to look for sources: agents, players, staff, we didn’t know them. But it was also an advantage, because we were able to ask all the questions and follow through to the end.