With the Champions League resuming this week, we are reminded once again of the implicit hierarchies built into the top level of European football.
There’s the “Old Money” (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus). There’s the “New Money” (PSG, and Monaco—kind of). And there’s the “Less Money” (Atletico Madrid and FC Porto).
While theoretically equal, having reached the same stage of the competition—where seedings are no longer allocated and UEFA therefore stops suggesting different levels of importance for different clubs—we are all vaguely aware of how the clubs stand in these terms. We see it in the money they spend and how they spend it. We see it in how they’re talked about by others, and how they talk about themselves.
Tuesday programming alert: Watch Atletico Madrid vs Real Madrid on the four main Sportsnet channels and Juventus vs AS Monaco on Sportsnet World. Coverage starts at 2:30 pm ET. || Sportsnet World NOW || Broadcast schedule
For the Old Money, this arrangement works fine—these clubs get both success and respect, the complete package. For the Less Money, there’s not really any choice about the situation, as their success is a rare occurrence and their respect comes very often with a condescending tinge, but they can’t instantaneously inject themselves with the funds to change all that, so there’s a degree of acceptance in play.
But for the New Money, these hierarchical structures are often a more uncomfortable fit—these clubs can get success, but they find respect more difficult to come by, and that’s what they (and their investor-owners) really want.
The will to combine success and respect leads, almost always, to a two-step process for the archetypal nouveau riche club. First, it tries desperately to tell everyone about its new-found wealth, buying big-name players and making sure to tell everyone about it (the noisy neighbours paradigm as set out by Manchester City), Then, once it realizes that that approach mainly provokes derision, it learns to act a bit more like Old Money clubs, and show rather than tell.
And so to Paris Saint-Germain, which plays Barcelona on Wednesday in the first leg of its quarterfinal and finds itself firmly into phase two of the nouveau riche adventure— showing, not telling.
PSG certainly had its time as a big-spending noise-making teller, signing the likes of Lucas Moura and Javier Pastore for extortionate fees and hiring the first generic big-name manager to become available (Carlo Ancelotti) despite its pre-money coach doing pretty well. Now, however, it appears content to be quieter and intent on being taken more seriously.
Now, it’s a shower. Big names aren’t being signed for the sake of it any more, with David Luiz—a centre-back, albeit a high-profile one—the only major signing this season and the relatively unglamorous Laurent Blanc installed as manager. There are far fewer grand statements. The result has been a relatively unglamorous team, often including high-end hard-workers such as Blaise Matuidi and Thiago Motta, but one that may soon secure a third league title in a row and has already secured another League Cup crown this past weekend.
On such sturdy foundations, Old Money things such as respect and legitimacy tend to be built. But still something is lacking. And that thing is a proper run in the Champions League.
No respect-based rebrand is complete without the kind of European run that makes everyone wonder what it was like before that club was there; the kind that saw Chelsea finally initiated full-time into the European top-echelon in 2012, when it won the thing. That’s what PSG needs.
Wednesday programming alert: Watch Paris Saint-Germain vs Barcelona on the four main Sportsnet channels and Porto vs Bayern Munich on Sportsnet World. Coverage starts at 2:30 pm ET. || Sportsnet World NOW || Broadcast schedule
It doesn’t need to win the whole competition; it just needs a run of knockout round wins that demonstrate without any words that it isn’t goofing around, pretending to be a real European force. Specifically, it needs to follow its defeat of a Jose Mourinho side in the last round by beating a second member of European royalty in the aforementioned Barcelona.
If Blanc’s PSG can beat a Lionel Messi-inspired side then the images of a team with an inferiority complex, signing big name stars in a lame attempt to prove itself are gone, replaced instead by the image of a genuine, intimidating European force.
The Champions League is definitive in this respect. It’s the only place where you can’t and won’t be ignored once you start knocking out other big teams. The caveats disappear and the acknowledgement springs forth. The Old Money—and everyone else—has to respect you once you start beating them on their own territory, in the European Cup.
So, if PSG is to reach beyond the limitations of its nouveau riche, New Money position in the European football hierarchy, all it has to do is stop Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez. Got that? Should be easy, right?
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter