John Textor, president of Olympique Lyonnais, has a particularly tense relationship with Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, his counterpart at Paris Saint-Germain. We saw this again this week, when images of a meeting last summer were revealed. The Lyon manager added to this a complaint announced this Friday in AS.
Textor “if we don’t get a satisfactory answer, we’ll take the matter to the European Commission.”
“Not a single (French) club that protested against Almada’s loan, complained when PSG spent €200M on Neymar, Messi and Mbappé, as well as an endless list of footballers. I can confirm that we’re going to lodge a complaint with the league so that PSG has to comply with the European Commission’s law.
We’re going to ask the LFP’s legal commission to analyze this issue, as other clubs have done with us and Thiago Almada, and, if we don’t get a satisfactory response, we’ll take the matter to the European Commission.”
Clearly, Textor has launched a war. We’ve already seen other managers go down this road against PSG and get nowhere. So we’re expecting the same result. But the timing is also right, between the match between Lyon and Paris this Sunday (23rd day of Ligue 1) and the revelations of the week. The latter is no coincidence.
In any case, the executive’s complaint is a bold one, given that he is the owner of several clubs with some rather dubious transactions. He’s certainly not in the best position to take on Paris. But that’s to be expected, given the situation.
