Bruno Satin, player agent, gave his expert opinion in Le Parisien on Paris Saint-Germain’s start to the season, in relation to the new, younger, less star-studded project. He spoke of the two phases of the project, pointing out that the squad is fairly inexperienced, even if collectively it is starting to look more and more enthusiastic. For him, the players arrive at too high a price for their pedigree.
Satin “There’s less talent, less charisma, but collectively”.
“We’re no longer in the project launch phase. We needed stars back then. I was surprised that people were surprised by the ratio of chances to goals until recently, before Manchester City let’s say. Bradley Barcola isn’t Kylian Mbappé, Gonçalo Ramos isn’t Neymar and nobody is Leo Messi. There’s less talent, less charisma, but collectively it’s becoming interesting, even if we were very bored in the first half of the season.
They’re very good players, but they’re too expensive for the market price. The clauses of recruits from Portugal are paid without negotiation, like Nuno Mendes or Vitinha. As they arrive young at PSG, they could be paid less.”
Above all, it can be said that PSG has tried different things. Feeding the team with stars for years had the effect of creating a general buzz around a team that was (in the 2010s) very average. We needed a boost to get the project off the ground, and the directors thought that would be enough. We’ve had some very good PSG teams, including Laurent Blanc’s, Unai Emery’s and Thomas Tuchel’s in their early days. The club realized that the salaries they were paying were a problem in terms of the Financial Fair Play regulations, and above all, the team hadn’t really been progressing for several years.
With the recruitment of Luis Enrique, the idea is also to see the team with a desire for a medium- to long-term project. Let’s be clear, we needed to recruit youngsters with high potential, who would be more amenable to the coach’s ideas. Collectively, we’ve realized since Luis Enrique’s arrival that the players no longer have the same profile, they run more and above all have more personality.
When Satin says that the players he buys are too expensive, we can hear him, even if the reality is not so clear-cut. He takes the example of Nuno Mendes and Vitinha, two players who cost a fairly high price. It’s true that the club could have tried to negotiate, but it’s also true that PSG made no mistake.
What would we have heard if the club had let them go to other big teams? Because today, Vitinha is top 30 Ballon d’Or winner, Nuno Mendes is one of the world’s best pistons, João Neves is in the running to be one of the world’s best midfielders in the future and not so far away in the present. PSG overpays a little, but it’s also because Ligue 1 is less popular, that we also had to explain the importance of the new project.
Today, PSG no longer has stars, but players who will have a huge impact on world soccer. As an agent, he knows the mercato game, and sometimes you have to make tough choices, and above all go for the players who best fit in with the project. In this sense, PSG seems to have taken the best direction.
