English Premier League club Manchester City and French Ligue 1 club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) – these two state-owned clubs’ recent behaviour has raised many eyebrows in the football world.
As time progress, major concerns are rising about the financial fair plays of the clubs like Manchester City and PSG. Whenever they are in the battle to sign key players, these two clubs are ready to spend monstrously without even considering the income statement.
Recently, Kylian Mbappe’s incident between PSG and the Spanish club Real Madrid has raised the fair play question once again in the football world. While it was reportedly quite sure of Mbappe’s exit from PSG and joining Real Madrid, PSG’s ultra-lucrative deal set up a much controversial contract extension for the French star footballer. However, it is just a small part of the big concern in present world football.
Manchester City and PSG dominance
Talking about the last decade in European football, both Manchester City and PSG are reportedly top of the losses. Both these state-owned clubs have ridiculously spent their money to catch the players.
If we look at the top 10 gross salaries of the footballers in the global clubs, all the top five players are serving for either PSG or Manchester City. In the French Ligue 1, all the top 10 salaried players are serving for PSG. In fact, 18 out of 20 most salaried players of French Ligue 1 are from PSG.
While PSG are far from facing any sanction for violating UEFA Financial Fair Play, Manchester City’s earlier ban from European competitions for two seasons (for alleged breaches of the UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations) was overturned in a month, citing the allegations were mostly unproven.
The state-owned companies have also entered to dominate the sponsorship markets in European club football. While Qatar Airways are the present shirt sponsor (sleeve) of the German club giants Bayern Munich, they were also the previous shirt sponsor of the Spanish club giants Barcelona and Italian top-tier football club Roma. In the meantime, Spanish giants Real Madrid have another state-owned company’s shirt sponsor, Emirates. This list will be easily bigger if we see more top European football clubs.
Current and recent future status
Though City and PSG haven’t won the UEFA Champions League titles yet, both of them are dominating their respective domestic first-tier football leagues. As PSG (2019/20) and City (2020/21) have already recorded one UCL runners-up each in recent times, many believe that they will be the future UCL champions, thanks to their power of money and no powerful restrictions for them in the current Financial Fair Play rules.
