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The new season of the Ligue 1the most important men’s men’s football championship, and for the first time after 35 years in Ligue 1 there will be a derby between two teams in Paris. One is the Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), a reigning champion in France and Europe; The other is the Paris FC, which in the seventies was the same team of the PSG for a period (there were various mergers and split), which in November 2024 was bought by the richest family in France (and a little also by Red Bull) and whose stage for the next season is literally found a few steps from that of the PSG.
The Paris FC (as always in FC football stands for Football Club) arrives in Ligue 1 by virtue of second place in the past edition of Ligue 2, the French Serie B. It is almost impossible that from this year he can win Ligue 1 (which PSG has won 11 of the last 13 times) but certainly there are ambitious plans: the Arnault family, which controls the luxury group LVMHhe bought the majority shares together with Red Bull, the Austrian company that has been investing a lot in football and sport in general for years.
Paris and football have A complicated storyor at least they had it before in 2011 the PSG had bought from the sovereign fund of Qatar: his money made the team almost unbeatable in France and increasingly competitive in Europe, up to the Victory last May in the Champions Leaguethe most important European club trophy, in a season in which he won his fourth Ligue 1 in a row, with 19 points ahead of the second.
In many large European cities it is normal that there are two high -level teams. London, even, has seven in the top English championship. The fact that Paris, whose metropolitan area has about 11 million inhabitants, had only one team in Ligue 1 was a strangeness, almost an inconsistency. “The presence of a second great team in Paris has been a chimera for years”, he wrote The world“A dream to and from magnates”. In fact, the attempts have been more than one, often rather bankruptcy, to the point that proper The world He talked about a metaphorical “curse“Concerning the plan to create a second strong men’s football team based in Paris.
The Paris FC (often shortened in PFC) has existed since 1969 and has since been founded, dissolved, melted, re -founded, again melted, again dissolved and then still refounded. It was created In 1969 by a group of entrepreneurs and famous people (including the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo). Shortly afterwards he merges with another team, the Saint-Germanois Stade (from the name of a municipality just outside Paris), to form the Paris Saint-Germain Football Clubin whose name traces of the names of both remained. The merger lasted little and in 1972 two new teams were re-founded: the Paris FC, which was held stadium, players and sports title (the possibility of playing at high levels right away), and the PSG, which returned to the municipality of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and restarted as a lower series.
But in a few years things overturned: while Paris FC descended in category and lost importance, the PSG (which also resumed the stadium) returned high. In Ligue 1 they crossed only in 1979 (while the last derby played in Ligue 1 between two Paris teams was Psg-Racing in 1990). In fact, like he explained all’Team Nicolas Kssis-Martov, an expert in the history of the Parisian teams, “there has never been a real rivalry between PSG and Paris FC, because the PSG became too stronger in too little time”.
In the troubled history of Paris FC there is also a second fusion in the 1980s, with another team in Paris. Also that time it went badly and in this case it was the Paris FC that returned to the lower categories, remaining for decades far from Ligue 1 and also from Ligue 2, in which the team has returned permanently only since 2017. Things began to stabilize only since 2012, when the team was bought by the French entrepreneur Pierre Ferracci, who in 2020 ceded part of his shares to the Sovereign Fund of Bahrein.
Finally, in November 2024 the Arnault arrived, who acquired the shares of the Paris FC via Agache, the family holding, and not through the LVMH group. Specifically, to deal directly with the team is Antoine Arnaultson of Bernard (the fifth richest man in the world and for a while the first). Since November 2024 Agache has the majority of the shares And Red Bull, chosen as a partner for his experience in football, 10.6 percent. Ferracci has maintained some of his altitudes, but it is expected that he gives them to the Arnault family in 2027, with whom he seems so far be in great harmony on what the team is concerned.
Antoine Arnault and Pierre Ferracci on November 20, 2024 in Orly, France (Kristy Scripw/Getty Images)
Despite the grandeur of the name Red Bull and Arnault, the acquisition of the club seems to have been quite soft so far, without striking purchases and with the intention – at least in words, and for now – to grow the team with relative calm, without excessive tears from one year to the next (a bit like in Italy it is trying to do the As).
“We don’t want to burn the stages,” he said Ferracci at the end of 2024 (therefore after the arrival of Red Bull and Arnault), also referring to the intention to make a certain number of local players play in the team, that is, grown up in the Paris area. He also spoke of the will to make the team remain “popular”. Seen who controls it may seem, and in part it is certainly a paradox, but it is equally true that the PSG is still today (certainly not a “poor” team) is very popular nelle suburb, The suburbs of Paris.
After promotion in Ligue 1, Paris FC has made several purchases of players considered valid for the category, with an overall budget that is expected to exceed 130 million euros: a high figure for Ligue 1, which should allow the team to remain more or less in the middle of the standings, but which will hardly allow it to play the top positions. So far the most expensive purchase of the summer (even the most expensive in the entire history of the team) was that of Otávio23 year old Brazilian defender bought from the port for about 12 million euros.
In general, at least for now, Paris FC has made rather pragmatic purchases, which seem to aim to make the team solid and ready to Ligue 1 rather than to be flashy, perhaps thanks to the name of recall of some well -known footballer at the end of his career. It is also significant that the new property has chosen to reconfirm Stéphane Gilli, a 51 -year -old Frenchman who trains Paris FC since 2023, after having been assistant coach for a few years (and, for a short period, interim coach).
As shown by some choices of the last few months, the new property also aims to reorganize the team’s managerial and administrative area, as well as to improve the quality of its infrastructures (for example fields and training structures).
Already in February of this year, therefore well before being sure of the promotion in Ligue 1, the team had announced that from this season (and until 2029) he would play at Jean-Bouina stadium of about 20 thousand places that lies right next to the Parco dei Principi, which is still the stadium where the PSG plays at home. The two stadiums are a few meters away from each other, only separated from one road, Rue Claude Farrère. For this reason, the Ligue 1 calendar has been studied so that the two teams play both at home – but not on the same day – only once. The two derby will be January 4th and May 16, 2026.
The Parco dei Principi and the Jean-Bouin in a photo of 2024 (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
It is never easy, not even with large investments, to transform a small team, which comes from a lower category, into a strong team, capable of being constantly in the first places. As in many other cases, albeit with the perspective of a few years, it seems that this is the plan of the Paris FC, and without doubt the possibility of a real competition with the PSG – which for years has been winning without too much competition – could help solve part of the economic problems that Ligue 1 is having. In short, it is difficult to get passionate about a tournament where they always win the same.
Meanwhile, already before the arrival of the Arnault, the Paris FC is instead very competitive at the female level. In the past season of the most important French women’s championship, the team came third, a few points from Paris Saint-Germain, in turn second behind Lyon, one of the strongest teams at European level, which in recent years has dominated women women’s football even more than the PSG has done with the male.
