Super League, Mbappe and at loggerheads over lunch: the feud between PSG and Real Madrid
In the hours before Paris Saint-Germain beat Real Madrid in the Champions League last month, their respective presidents met for a traditional pre-match lunch that summed up the antipathy between the two clubs.
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez arrived late to the Pavillon Ledoyen restaurant near the Champs Elysees. Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Qatari president of PSG, is then said to have taken Perez to task at length over the Spanish side’s support for a European Super League. “I killed him for 10 minutes,” Al-Khelaifi later told an aide, according to one source.
The episode illustrates that tonight’s second leg of that tie is about far more than just who reaches this season’s Champions League quarter-finals. It is also part of an arm wrestle to decide the future of European football between two clubs who have come to see themselves not just as rivals but also enemies.
“It’s no secret, we have almost no relations,” Al-Khelaifi told Canal Plus last month. “We have a completely different opinion, different mentality and different objective.”
In Spain, there is agreement on that at least. “The relationship between Real Madrid and PSG is going through its worst moment,” says Carlos Carpio, deputy editor at Madrid-based sports newspaper Marca. “What was once a very friendly relationship between both presidents is now broken, and it seems not easy to fix it.”
For PSG and Al-Khelaifi, the enmity is about the Super League. Perez and Real Madrid, with Andrea Agnelli at Juventus, were the driving force behind the attempted breakaway, which exploded on take-off last year.
Al-Khelaifi rejected their advances, aligning himself with European governing body Uefa in what proved a politically astute manoeuvre, and is said to have been furious when Perez falsely claimed the French club had never been invited in the first place. That Perez and Agnelli continue to pursue the project has made matters worse.
But Kylian Mbappe, the star of PSG’s team who has been persistently wooed by Real Madrid, is also a major factor.
“Paris do not forgive Florentino for trying to sign the jewel in the crown, Mbappe,” says Carpio. “Their opposing interests regarding the Super League don’t help either, but above all the main reason for that fight is the best football player in the world.”
Perez has also painted PSG and other clubs backed by sovereign wealth funds, such as Manchester City, as a danger to the game, saying last year that they “seriously compromise the future of football”.
PSG are understood to be angry at reports that the French club have offered Mbappe a new contract worth €1m a week, which senior figures suspect is Real Madrid using “lies” to paint them as fiscally irresponsible.
In Spain, the expectation is that Mbappe will move – “The opposite would be a big surprise,” says Carpio – but PSG are hopeful he will stay put.
Mbappe gave PSG a first-leg advantage with a late moment of magic last month and it would be no surprise if he decided tonight’s return leg.
Victory would tip the on-field balance of power between the clubs further towards PSG, who have outperformed Real Madrid in Europe since the Spaniards lifted their 13th European Cup in 2018. Off-field, Al-Khelaifi has established the upper hand over Perez in football’s corridors of power.
Before the second leg the two presidents are due to meet for lunch again in Madrid. The tie may be decided hours later but, while Perez and Agnelli wait for a European legal ruling before mounting another potential push for a Super League, the struggle for supremacy between new and old forces will go on.