EDITORIAL
Neymar will stay at PSG this season. No agreement has been reached with FC Barcelona. For our editorialist Virginie Phulpin, the Parisian club is reinforced by this endless series.
"PSG has not strengthened because Neymar remains on the ground - I still ask to see - but by the way he handled this issue PSG has shown much less naivety this summer than it does. would have posted the previous years.
As early as June, Neymar made it clear that he wanted to leave and return to Barça. The response of President Nasser Al Khelaïfi slammed: "I want players willing to give everything, if they do not agree, the doors are open." Neymar did not necessarily expect that. Nobody came to kneel before him to beg him to stay. This attitude shows a real change of policy. And then in the face of daily rumors, at no time did we feel panic at PSG. In my opinion, the leaders had few quiet days, but at least it did not show. And bluffing pays, in all gambling, poker as the transfer window.
The little sentences of the sports director
Leonardo saves PSG behind the scenes. Look at him, the sports director: he wielded the baton with Neymar to show him that nobody was indispensable. He also knows how to be smiling and warm, and enter the arena as he did on Friday night, after the match in Metz, to say what he had to say. "There were negotiations with FC Barcelona and at no point did we get what we wanted." End of story. The words are simple. Leonardo masters communication as nobody. And for a club that wants to find a place in the European sun, it matters. It's less visible than a win in the Champions league, but it commands respect.
A victory against FC Barcelona
PSG is doing a lot better than Barça! The Catalan club struggled to bring back Neymar. All this to recover a player who had left Barcelona by slamming the door two years earlier. In vain. For the image, this drama is quite devastating, next to an imperturbable PSG that ends up taking away the piece. But there is still work to be done: that Neymar becomes a football player again, that the Parisian locker room forgives his quirks of starlet and that the fans accept him again. In short, now we must also have a program of re-entry. "