The build-up to PSG’s tie against Manchester United in the Champions League was centered around a player who is unlikely to even set foot on the pitch in either leg. Such is life with Neymar, a continual source of histrionics wrapped up in a soap opera inside a melodrama. His latest metatarsal drama has inflicted a sense of angst on the PSG camp and perpetuated the creeping sense that, for all the club’s bountiful array of playing talent, they depend to an unhealthy degree on the availability of their precocious Brazilian star.
There is some precedent here as PSG have long had a symbiotic relationship with Brazilian footballers. Indeed, were Neymar more inclined towards reflecting on the long and fruitful association his compatriots have enjoyed with PSG than personal brand building, he would have chosen 33 as his squad number rather than the predictable 10. When he and Dani Alves arrived in the French capital in 2017, the pair became the 32nd and 33rd boys from Brazil to have worn a PSG shirt since the club’s formation in 1971.
The roots of this relationship lie in the complex historical nature of the typical Parisian football fan. This was a city that for decades thumbed a collective nose at run-of-the-mill league fixtures, yet would readily turn out in huge numbers for big European nights and cup finals. Beleaguered club owners came to understand that football was little different to show business for the Parisian footballing public, so to gain their fickle attentions you had to serve up big names and box-office attractions. And no footballer suggests glamour and exoticism like a Brazilian.
This long-running liaison between Paris and Brazil was not love at first sight. The first Brazilian to pitch up in Paris for the club’s debut season in Ligue 1 in 1971 was the World Cup-winning central defender Joel Camargo. It was a signing that proved terribly judged. A player of undoubted pedigree he might have been, but Joel spectacularly failed to adapt to a new country and culture. His performances were substantially affected and he made just two appearances before returning home a matter of months later.
Eight years elapsed before the club were brave enough to dip their toe into the Brazilian market again. The belated second signing was Abel Braga, a central defender with one cap who arrived at the club from Vasco da Gama and proved more dependable than his predecessor, playing regularly over the next two seasons.
After signing just a couple of central defenders during their first two decades of existence, PSG began to adopt a more determinedly Brazil-first transfer policy in the early 1990s – and with some success. In 1991, the club acquired a trio of Brazilians from Portuguese giants Porto and Benfica: the powerful center-back Geraldão, the elegant sweeper Ricardo Gomes (who now manages Bordeaux) and the skilled wide player Valdo. The difference this time was that all three players were already assimilated into European club football and PSG did not have to face the cultural issues encountered with Joel. Ricardo and Valdo would prove to be great successes in Paris.
Two years later the club pulled off something of a coup when they acquired midfield playmaker Raí from São Paulo. Serie A dominated the European game at the time and every Brazilian star wanted to play in Italy. PSG understood they would have to box clever and try to woo players who were not yet prominent on the radar of the traditional giants of the European game. This approach, allied to a willingness to meet the often onerous personal and financial demands made by Brazilian footballers and their coterie of hangers-on, was also particularly evident when they signed Ronaldinho in 2001.
Raí spent five hugely influential years at the club. He also won the USA 94 World Cup while on the books at PSG, although perhaps not in the way he would have planned it. Having started the tournament as Brazil captain and scored in their opening game, he was dropped for the knockout stages and watched as Dunga lifted the trophy in his place. Regardless, his time in France helped PSG establish a valuable relationship with São Paulo. Lucas Moura (now at Tottenham) and Gustavo Hebling (now at Portimonense) both followed this path, and Leonardo – who played for PSG in the mid-1990s and went on to serve as the club’s director of football – also had two spells at São Paulo before arriving in France.
The late-1990s and early 2000s were something of a lost decade for the relationship. Sixteen Brazilians arrived at PSG between 1997 and 2007, but most left having made no meaningful impact whatsoever. The exception was Ronaldinho and even his contributions were fairly fitful during his two seasons at the Parc des Princes, the football too often getting in the way of his party lifestyle. As his manager at the time, Luis Fernández, put it: “I don’t have a problem with him. Ronaldinho has a problem with himself. He doesn’t have the lifestyle of a top-level sportsman.”
Brazilians flooded in from all quarters: the failing “next-big-things” Adailton and Christian, the Serie A midfield liability Vampeta, the successes-in-Saint-Etienne-but-flops-in-Paris Alex Dias and Aloísio. Then there was a succession of anonymous names that even PSG supporters will struggle to recall: César Belli, Denilson (not the famous one or the Arsenal one), André Luiz, Souza, Reinaldo, Everton Santos and Edmilson. Unsurprisingly the club’s abject transfer failings in the Brazilian market mirrored their general failings on the field during this era.
In 2011 the club undertook a necessary reset in their relationship with Brazilians, something that would be further shaped by the huge influx of Qatari money flooding in the following year. The signings of Chelsea center-back Alex and Barcelona full-back Maxwell started a concerted push to install a sizable clique of Seleção players in the capital. Eight seasons later, their first team regularly has more Brazilian players than French players, with captain Thiago Silva, vice-captain Marquinhos, right-back Dani Alves and, of course, Neymar, taking key positions on the pitch and in the dressing room.
PSG’s power brokers clearly want to make the club the go-to European destination for Brazil’s brightest and best stars, so expect that total of 33 to rise sharply in the years to come.
The Guardian Sport
