Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

In defence of Neymar’s transfer fee

A season ticket at the Parc des Princes, home to Paris Saint-Germain, will set you back somewhere between £336 and £2,116, with individual tickets ranging from £25 to over £100, depending on how good your eyesight is. But this is a small price to pay in order to watch footballing luminaries like Edinson Cavani, Ángel di María and Dani Alves light up a league that has long been the sickly cousin of the European superpowers. Indeed, if you’re a PSG fan, this cost will be nothing compared to the phenomenal resurrection, started in 2011, of a European superpower that appeared to be in terminal decline.

PSG are on the verge of obliterating (and I don’t use that word lightly) the world transfer record in order to sign Barcelona striker Neymar for £198m, a cool £108.7m more than the previous record  (Paul Pogba for Manchester United). A 10 per cent slice of that fee will go to Neymar’s father – also his agent – who is the sort of helicopter parent who can afford a helicopter.

The natural instinct is, of course, to point to this as the death of football. That reaction is compounded by the fact that PSG are owned by the Qatar Sports Investment group, a branch of the Qatari government. They describe their mission as ‘To invest in established and emerging sport… We want to create great value for our customers, the general public and our stakeholders.’ So, naturally, to prove great value for the Qatari people, they bought a football club in Paris and ploughed money into it. But the Qatari football project is actually slightly more nuanced: hosting the 2022 World Cup has forced them into Gatsbyesque spending on infrastructure and grassroots development. As a result, the national team continue to improve, beating South Korea back in June.

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