PARIS — The contrast couldn’t be greater.
On a frigid Saturday night earlier this year at the Stade Charléty, a World War II stadium along a highway, the stands are barely a quarter full. Only about 3,000 fans have turned up to watch Paris FC, a crowd so small that when the home side goes to salute their support after the win, the players need only go to one corner of the stadium. The other sections are not even open, given the meager demand for tickets.
On Sunday, another team from Paris takes the field, and fans around the world tune in to watch. This Parisian team, the billion dollar project you know from the Champions League, the team with all the money, all the glamor and all the stars, has traveled to Marseille for another installment of French football’s greatest rivalry. There it takes another step towards its last championship behind goals from Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi.
That yawning gap between the teams is something the owners of Paris FC are eager to close. They argue that the Paris region, with its population of more than 12 million, deserves an elite league rivalry, the kind that flows through European cities like London and Lisbon, Madrid and Milan.
The problem, Paris FC notes, is that even with football’s largest talent pool at its doorstep and backed by its own golf clubs, closing the gap in a single-team city is extremely difficult.
Second team
Sitting in a brasserie close to his home in an upscale neighborhood where Napoleon’s tomb stands, Pierre Ferracci, the largest owner of Paris FC, ponders why Paris – one of the world’s great cities and the producer of more football talent than alone about every other metropolis in the world – has only one top division team, Paris St.-Germain.
Ferracci, 70, lists a group of European capitals before moving on to other major cities to underline the outlier Paris. He eventually lands in London, less than three hours by train, where so many Premier League teams currently play that Ferracci gives up on naming them all.
He explains away the contrast between France and England (and Germany and Spain and Italy) as a kind of French exceptionalism. “It’s cultural,” says Ferracci. “We are less attached to football than other countries.”
He knows that devotion to the sport, at least in Paris, does not run deep. “The supporters come here when there is success, when we climb the rungs of the ladder,” he said. “They stop coming when the team descends.”
In the stands of the Charléty, the few supporters seem to confirm this view, as they offer different motivations for their presence. Zouber Hadj-Larbi, a self-described PSG fan, said he decided to attend his first Paris FC match because it was a much cheaper option than a ticket to the team he actually supports.
“It’s also a lot less spectacular,” he said with a laugh as the home side struggled to get a shot on target. Others in the crowd are tourists; a few say they only included the game because PSG were on their way.
Nearby, Laurent Pinet, who is part of Paris FC’s small cohort of regular fans, commiserated with a friend about the team’s struggle to attract a following. “It’s harder to be a football club in Paris than anywhere else,” he said. “You need immediate results to attract the public.”
Ferracci, who has been the club’s majority shareholder for 13 years, is convinced that more fans will come when the team plays in the top division, attracted by both the success and the name. “The chance we have,” he said, “is that we have a good name: Paris FC”
He admits his club is unlikely to ever become a true rival to PSG, certainly not as long as his neighbor is financed by Qatar. But careful and deliberate plans have been made to build a team that could finally give the Parisians a second top-level option.
That plan hinges on tapping into a resource that Paris has in abundance: talented young footballers.
Buy early
Ferracci’s ideas for reviving Paris FC crystallized after a dinner with famed French manager Arsene Wenger a few years after he took charge of the club in 2008. Wenger used hard data, anecdotes and a list of professional players who grew up in Paris to make his point. Ferracci often does the same now.
According to his estimate, 13 percent of all registered footballers in France come from Paris or the outskirts of the suburbs, and as many as 50 percent of professionals who make a living in France’s top two divisions grew up in the capital or in its shadow . Those players populate not only the national team of France, but also several others: Morocco. Senegal. Tunisia. Algeria. For example, at last year’s World Cup, Paris FC was able to track down seven of its own alumni among the participants.
However, just being close to the best players is not enough, said Jean Marc Nobilo. A well-travelled coach, Nobilo was hired two years ago to head Paris FC’s youth division, and he knows that every major team in Europe is now looking for players in Paris.
The fierce competition for that talent means Paris FC must dig it up before others notice it. Bidding wars are usually won by wealthier teams, thanks in part to French football rules that allow clubs to pay fees — sometimes as much as $100,000 — to the parents of gifted children.
For economic reasons alone, Nobilo said, “we need to get on the case before the others.”
To ensure that Paris FC can do that, Ferracci has enlisted his own star power and money from the Gulf. The first arrived in the form of a Paris Saint-Germain legend, retired Brazilian midfielder Raí, who was hired as a club ambassador and a connection to football’s other great talent pool, São Paulo.
Much-needed money came as an investment from the rulers of Bahrain, the Gulf emirate that became a minority owner in Paris FC three years ago
Giving up interests to foreign partners – besides the Bahrainis there are Americans, an Indian group and also Armenian shareholders of Paris FC – was somewhat bittersweet for Ferracci. The money has helped fund a multi-million dollar makeover of the club’s training facilities, located on the outskirts of Paris close to Orly Airport, and helped the club invest in new talent and staff to find more of it.
But it has also made Paris FC another club dependent on foreign capital, a trend that Ferracci deplores, even if he benefits from it. He says his Gulf royals have been much less generous than the Emirati owners at Manchester City or the Qataris at PSG – Paris FC’s annual turnover of 23 million euros ($25.4 million) is about half what Messi earns to be in the town – and Ferracci is fine with that.
“What I don’t like is countries like the Emirates and Qatar investing in football because it sets the bar too high,” he said, before launching into an unironical monologue about how Gulf-funded clubs have destabilized the football industry and created rivals forced to play football. risk financial ruin to try to keep up.
Ferracci is determined to control his team for as long as possible.
“Today I still want the majority of the capital to be local, the majority to remain French and national,” he said. “Why? Because if we continue like this, every club in the two top divisions will be owned by foreign investors, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
At the moment, he focuses on what his investors and his plan have made him pursue: a dream to create the best finishing school in French football. New facilities, the chance to play close to home and the ability to give teenagers an earlier chance at first-team football all give Paris FC a chance to achieve its goal of filling at least a third of its squad with talent from home soil. Five players in the current Paris FC squad made it through the youth rankings. But more is needed.
How it handles those recruits and the others who arrive will determine the success of his project. Paris FC is currently bumping through another year in the middle of the second division ranking. That means rubbing shoulders with PSG, even if a minor irritation rather than a real rival, will have to wait at least another year.
“For now, they are aware of our existence,” says Pinet, one of the team’s regular fans. “We’ll talk about rivalries later.”
Tom Nouvian contributed reporting.