Euphoria. Ecstasy. A climax practically never reached at the Camp Nou. Champions League history. Sergi Roberto’s goal that certified the epic comeback against PSG, the famous 6-1 win in the 2016-17 season, further raised Barça’s feeling of sporting dominance over the Parisian club, eliminated for the third time in a row in the top competition European at the hands of the blaugrana. Qatar’s revenge, wounded in its pride, was not long in coming, at least in the offices. It would soon unleash a war where the Barcelona club has always been the loser, even until the last battle for Ousmane Dembélé.
A few months after that unprecedented comeback, in the fateful summer of 2017 for Barça, the Catalan club flirted with one of the flagships of the French team, a Marco Verratti who came to pose with a newspaper cover reporting on his possible signing for the blaugrana. The Italian was never close to leaving PSG, who locked themselves in, without even the possibility of negotiating, and prepared a much more damaging counteroffensive. On August 3, the gala entity signed Neymar after depositing the 222 million of his clause, a record figure even for a transfer.
With the Brazilian, PSG, which also won a young Kylian Mbappé that year, became one of the most powerful teams on the continent. Instead, Barça, hurt and desperate for the loss of one of its best players, spent all the money brought in on two footballers who have ultimately been a failure, first Philippe Coutinho and now Dembélé, the club’s two most expensive signings. . The sale of the Frenchman will confirm, once again, Barça’s weakness in the market against PSG with unlimited money and dubious compliance with financial fair play.
The greatest exponent of the club-State roams freely in Europe, also in bodies that go hand in hand with UEFA such as the ECA (European Clubs Association), whose president is Nasser Al Khelaïfi, also PSG’s chief executive. To make matters worse, the French champion has presented himself in recent years as a defender of traditional and modest football against the rebellious creators of the ‘evil’ Super League, including Barça.
Whenever Barça has been interested in a PSG player, since Marquinhos in 2016, they have encountered a wall. They haven’t even sat down at the table. Attracted by Neymar’s cries for help, who has never been completely comfortable in Paris, the culé entity tried on several occasions to return the Brazilian, but they always ran into an inflexible PSG, even abusive in the face of the economic weakness of the Catalans . In addition, almost every time that Barça has been interested in a player from a third team, the club owned by Qatar has intervened and financially increased the operation, as in the case of Frenkie De Jong, who finally chose his dream of playing in the Camp Nou against the petrodollars.
The icing on the cake for that negotiating humiliation, this time without money involved, came when in 2021 Leo Messi chose to fly to Paris after his continuity in the club of his life was cut short. The image of the Argentine with the PSG shirt for two years still hurts among the culé fans.
With Dembélé, Barça will once again lose its most destabilizing player in favor of the Parisians, but it has a slim chance of returning so many frustrated operations to PSG. Despite the fact that the Frenchman’s contract does not help, more advantageous for the player than for the club, Barça must cling to the 100 million clause, a practically utopian sales figure that would be seen as a small blaugrana victory against the Parisian ogre.
