Qatar showed Man City the way to build a football club

0No longer arrivistes, Paris St-Germain are chasing a third Champions League title in a row this season – Getty Images/Maja HitijWhen Manchester City endured their first major sanction over financial fair play in 2014, the biggest club accused alongside them that summer was Paris St-Germain, another Champions League arriviste who had been raised from mediocrity to the elite by some frantic spending from a Middle East fossil fuel dynasty.

Then, 12 years ago, both sides bitterly opposed the Uefa sanctions imposed on them – although they eventually agreed to the terms. Now, they face one another in Manchester with PSG aiming for a third consecutive Champions League title, and City fighting for their life in the face of an overwhelming guilty verdict for nine years of Premier League rule-breaking.

Both clubs are transformed from the entities that their current owners acquired. While PSG now find themselves at the centre of the new order in European football, City are once again on the outside.

Bought in 2011 by the Qatari sovereign investment fund Qatari Sports Investments (QSI), PSG have not always had an easy relationship with the regulatory bodies. Their Qatari chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi, now arguably the most powerful man in football, was once a fierce opponent of Aleksander Ceferin, the Uefa president.

Since the European Super League breakaway in 2021, the two men have become allies. Between them they control the distribution of the wealth of the Champions League, the most lucrative football competition in the world, via Uefa and the European Football Clubs organisation that Al-Khelaifi leads. They are also thrust together by their opposition to Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president.

PSG went from outsiders to the game’s key power brokers after the Super League fallout pushed more established leading clubs to the margins of power in 2021.

In 2014, as Uefa controls took effect, PSG had accepted a Uefa fine of €60m (£52m), of which €40m was suspended, and a reduction in their squad size for the following season. City were given a similar fine structure and squad reduction that same summer.

PSG would face a Uefa investigation again in 2018 when the club broke the transfer record by signing Neymar for £198m. Uefa eventually decided there was no case to answer. PSG were fined again by Uefa in 2022, around €10m (£8.5m), and warned that further breaches could trigger a further €65m.

But by then City had fought a monumental appeal against a Uefa decision in 2020 to ban them from the Champions League for two seasons for breach of financial controls. Winning at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) on appeal, with many of the original charges ruled as time-barred, City had again demonstrated that it was hard for regulatory bodies to make sanctions stick. Three years later the club won their first Champions League title. That same season PSG went out in the round of 16 for the second consecutive year.

City have protested against the guilty verdict and believe they will win against the Premier League on appeal as they once did with Uefa at Cas. Although this time it will be much harder.

At PSG, there will be a natural iciness with the Abu Dhabi leadership of City. The United Arab Emirates took part in the blockade of Qatar with Saudi Arabia and other states in the region for almost four years up to the settlement in January 2021, although the history of animosity goes back further. Qatar had originally been part of the nascent UAE, until declaring independence in 1971. There were allegations the UAE backed a coup against Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the former Emir of Qatar, who seized power from his father in 1995. The deposed emir had lived in exile in the UAE.

In the 21st-century soft-power battle taking place in European football, Abu Dhabi’s royal owner might have claimed the Champions League title first, but it is the Qataris who wield the most power in Uefa and have, for the last two years, owned Europe’s pre-eminent team.

In France, PSG rule supreme. The club will publish financial results for the 2025-26 season at the end of this month although little is expected to have changed relative to their domestic rivals. The 2024-25 figures revealed a PSG turnover of €837m (£707m) – the nearest Ligue 1 club was Lille on €191m, a total that was little more than PSG’s match-day revenue of €175m alone.

PSG’s figures are all the more noteworthy given the collapse of the Ligue 1 television rights deal, meaning they earn only €14m (£12m) annually from that source. Uefa rights income has been crucial to PSG as has that earned from the Fifa Club World Cup which has been split, in accounting terms, over the last two financial years.

Like City, they have a vast commercial income – €367m (£310m) in the most recent accounts. There have been questions in the past over deals. In 2014, a contract with the Qatari Tourism Authority was restated by Uefa when the governing body ruled it did not reflect fair market value.

PSG’s Qatar Airways front-of-shirt deal is crucial to the club. In addition to the national carrier, PSG have six Qatari entities among their 13 second-tier premium partners. The third-tier official partners are more diverse.

The club claim commercial revenue peaked at 32 per cent from Qatari partners and is now less than 20 per cent. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of PSG.

PSG point to a global brand that competes with the biggest in the world. The collaboration with US sportswear giant Nike’s Air Jordan label, no longer on the men’s shirts, has propelled PSG to new heights. PSG’s own association with Nike goes back as far as 1989, although since 2011 it has become more vital to Nike.

Along with Qatar Airways, Nike is the other PSG principal partner. After losing Kylian Mbappé to Swiss brand On, amid greater market competition and a falling share price, Nike is determined not to lose PSG. Talks continue over a 10-year deal worth €100m annually.

In France, the long-term football regulator is the Direction Nationale du Contrôle de Gestion (DNCG) which has a greater focus on debt and solvency than spending. The greatest challenge for PSG, as with all their European peers, is complying with Uefa’s squad cost ratio of 70 per cent of turnover. The DNCG listed the club’s wage bill at €535m (£452m) for the 2024-25 season, although that was 20 per cent down following the departure of Mbappé.

The next highest were Lyon, themselves now forced into major cutbacks, on €155m (£131m), and Marseille on €154m. PSG point out that, ultimately, they are not competing with domestic rivals. Instead, they are budgeting to play on a European stage against the big six in the Premier League, as well as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich.

PSG do have disadvantages. Like City, they play in a stadium owned by their city council. While the Etihad has been expanded beyond 60,000 with new private developments built around it, including the Co-op Live arena, PSG remain restricted by the Parc des Princes. It holds fewer than 48,000 fans and attempts to increase its capacity have been problematic.

For many years PSG were a byword for excess and impulsive transfer decisions that did not yield the desired results in the Champions League. City were regarded very differently, although after the leak of documents in 2018 that prompted the Uefa and then Premier League charges, life was never the same again.

When PSG visit it will not just be about the two great sides on the pitch but the competence, or otherwise, of the people who run them and how that reflects upon their tiny wealthy Gulf states. Even in spite of PSG’s slow start to the Ligue 1 season, there is no doubt which club is currently in the ascendance.