Paris Saint-Germain take heed: Manchester City proof that money can’t buy success

It is the Emirates Cup, the Gulf Championship, the petrodollar play-off. However you describe it, Wednesday’s Champions League quarter final between Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City is a wealthy business. Never before in the history of the game have two sides faced off with such resources behind them. This is a tie which will represent the high point in what has been described as football financial doping.

PSG, the club that has a history stretching all the way back to 1970 when Paris FC merged with Stade Saint-Germain, has been deliberately placed on the fast track to world domination. Taken over by the Qatar Investment Authority in 2011, the owners’ motive for getting involved were pretty clear from the start. Encouraged by the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy – himself entirely coincidentally a PSG supporter – it was reckoned an effective way to enhance its bid to win the right to stage the 2022 World Cup. And it worked.

Once they had affected a takeover, the Qataris and the small matter of their £115billion in available capital, were not simply going to leave their asset to fester. Under their stewardship, the club has subsequently won Ligue 1 on every available occasion, including this season when the title was achieved in record time in early March.

To go to a game at the Parc des Princes is to see the transformative effect the ownership has had. The crumbling sixties concrete bowl has been radically upgraded, its matronly exterior given a Hollywood facelift. Now the place oozes money, from the swanky commercial salons to the palatial dressing rooms - it is as comfortable a home as any in football. Frankly, you break your ankle in the corporate box carpets, so thick are they. This is a place that slaps you round the face with its wealth, the football ground equivalent of those gold Ferraris that park outside Harrods.

On the pitch too the scale of the backing is immediately self-evident. Ligue 1 has little of the cachet of the Premier League, La Liga or the Bundesliga. This is the place where local youngsters demonstrate that they have what it takes to be playing elsewhere and old timers come for a final, reduced pay day. Watch a game involving Monaco and the first reaction is: ‘oh, so that’s where Ricardo Carvalho ended up’. And Monaco used to be the league’s wealthiest participant.

It is not like that at PSG. There you encounter Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Angel Di Maria and David Luiz, players of real international pedigree, coveted across the continent, bought in for vast sums, enticed by eye-watering salaries. Zlatan is said to be on a £300,000-a-week deal.

And for that sort of outlay, what the owners really want to win is the Champions League; the competition which will catapult their project on to the world stage. It is no coincidence that the club’s principle commercial backer is the Qatar Tourism Authority.

But if the PSG owners believe it is all a simple matter of chucking money at the club and success in Europe is sure to follow, then this evening’s opponents might provide a cautionary check on their assumptions. The Abu Dhabi takeover of Manchester City is several years ahead of the PSG enterprise. Yet it has yielded far less in the way of silverware. Despite the excellence of the Etihad corporate planning, the magnificence of the facilities installed, the scale of the investment, the roll call of players brought in, City have won just two Premier League titles since they were attached to their own gushing hose of cash. Such is the vigour of the competition they face domestically, even the riches of Croesus are not sufficient to guarantee domination.

As Samir Nasri put it so succinctly this week, how would PSG get on if they were obliged to turn out on a Monday night at Stoke or play West Ham or take on Arsenal at the Emirates? The Frenchman knows what he is talking about. After all, City have shown precisely how hard it is to play Stoke, West Ham and Arsenal having accrued one point from their encounters with them this season.

What Nasri unintentionally drew attention to was this: the Premier League is providing a vivid demonstration that it requires more than money to win the division. Leicester’s galloping success, driven by a stirring team ethic, and Tottenham’s pressing excellence finished off by the home-grown flourish of Harry Kane, have shown mere finance is not enough. When the competition is fierce, you can’t buy a short cut. If you could, City would win every season by several furlongs. This season they can barely break into a canter.

For PSG it is the Champions League that will properly test their mettle. Their backing may be sufficient completely to distort a league nothing like as robust as the English, Spanish or German versions, but the European Cup presents a different challenge altogether. As City – and Chelsea before them - have found in the Premier League, it is not so easy to circumvent a properly competitive structure.

PSG’s Laurent Blanc may be relieved that he is facing a side in the quarter final as apparently distracted as City rather that what he calls the “ogres” of Europe (Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid). But even if he beats the Mancunian side – and with a team as inconsistent as City it is impossible to predict any such outcome – he will face Bayern, Barca or Real in the semi. And that will be the point when he discovers that he will need a lot more than cash to thrive. It is a lesson City’s owners have already discovered thanks to Claudio Ranieri’s unlikely East Midlands renaissance.