In the latest of a series of issues facing the club, Paris Saint Germain’s training base gets vandalised.
Following Paris Saint Germain’s (PSG) latest Champions League failure, the walls of their French training base, Camp des Loges, were smeared with profane graffiti.
The main targets of the vandals appeared to be the team’s Qatari president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, and the sporting director, Leonardo as one of the tags on the wall read “Nasser, Leo out.”
Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) acquired PSG in 2011 and Nasser Al-Khelaifi was named as the club’s 17th president. In addition to presiding over the French team, Al-Khelaifi is also chairman of beIN Media Group and QSI.
The expletive graffiti accused QSI of overseeing “10 years of mediocrity”, while another stated that “Paris will never be Qatari,” and, “Paris is us.”
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The now cleaned up vandalism happened hours after Leonel Messi and Neymar stood stunned in the middle of the field as they got booed and whistled at by the French club’s fans.
Lionel Messi left FC Barcelona after two decades to join PSG in August 2021.
This came following the club’s 3-0 Ligue 1 victory over Bordeaux on Sunday.
The game was the first after the team’s capitulation to Real Madrid mid-last week, where they held a two-goal lead in the Champions League, only to concede three goals in last 17 minutes of the game. Fans were not over the loss, as they made their disappointment clear in Sunday’s game.
The club’s fans have been vocal about their dissatisfaction with the club as the Collectif Ultras Paris group of them published an open letter calling for Al-Khelaifi to resign earlier this week.
“The unacceptable and inevitable disappointment that we feared and foresaw has unfortunately come to pass,” the letter stated. “We don’t have a short memory. We know what our return owes to President Nasser Al-Khelaïfi but it is clear he is not the man for the job. The club’s current situation requires complete reorganisation at all levels going forward and the daily presence of its president.”
PSG earned 7 out of their 9 Ligue 1 titles since QSI bought the French team in 2011. Additionally, before the ownership transfer, the club had only qualified for the Champions League a mere five times in its history. In the past 10 years, it reached the league’s knockout stage for ten consecutive seasons.
QSI has spent over a billion euros since its 2011 takeover without a Champions League title victory. In 2017, the capital club made headlines when it signed Neymar from FC Barcelona for a world record fee of €222 million.
Over the years, PSG signed other top footballers like Gianluigi Donnarumma, Georginio Wijnaldum, Achraf Hakimi, and Sergio Ramos.
Doha News contacted beIN Media Group for comment but they declined.
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