Red Bull will start its project at Paris FC from next month with the Arnault family. The aim is to get promoted and compete with PSG.
On January 1, at midnight, Red Bull will take its first steps in the French capital in an attempt to make Paris FC one of the most ambitious teams in French football. The company, together with the Arnault family, through its holding company, is huge, as the first goal is to promote the team directly to Ligue 1.
Paris FC has been competing in Ligue 2 in recent years
Founded in 1969, PFC last played in the French top flight in 1979. At its lowest point the team dropped to the fourth tier, but in recent years the club has found some stability. Paris FC has been playing in Ligue 2 since 2017 and the team is currently second, two points behind leaders Lorient after sixteen games.
Red Bull's plan is for the team to establish itself in the top division of French football to forge a rivalry with its older brother, Paris Saint-Germain.
The second team of Paris has not played in Ligue 1 for more than forty years and has entrusted this to a partnership formed by the Arnault family, one of the richest in the world, and Red Bull. The energy drinks company will be responsible for shaping the sports project and will hold 10.2% of the club's shares, while the Arnaults, with more than 50%, will design the commercial strategies, drawing on their extensive experience, and will also provide the financial capital. to improve both the team and the facilities.
There are few certainties and many questions that Red Bull's first transfer market in the French capital raises. As Antoine Arnault said, the club will a priori not do anything crazy and keep the strong core that has made it one of the most important teams in the French second division.
According to reports in France, Paris FC will have 10 million euros available for its first transfer window, the winter window, where the aim is to strengthen the squad with three players to ensure promotion to Ligue 1.
The team already has great talents, such as ex-Marseille player Maxime Lopez, ex-Sevilla player Kolodziejczak, but also Kebbal and Krasso, footballers far above the level required by the silver category of French football.
Neither Red Bull nor the Arnault family want to turn Paris FC into PSG 2.0, but rather a project with an identity and that uses the best young players from the region, Île-de-France, which exports the most to the big five competitions along the border. with São Paulo, to forge a competitive team that can establish itself in Ligue 1.
In France, it was rumored that the club would have 200 million euros available with the aim of looking at European competitions in the short term, a possibility that, although publicly rejected by majority shareholder Antoine Arnault, cannot be ruled out. from the summer, as long as the PFC confirms its promotion to Ligue 1 in May.
PFC will eventually overtake PSG
According to a Qatari member of PSG, LÈquipe reports that there is a lack of confidence in what Paris FC can do in the future. “In Qatar we see the arrival of a competitor with enormous resources, which has the name Paris and the Eiffel Tower on its logo. At Paris FC it is no longer the same situation as before, even though they had previously progressed to Ligue 1. It will take time, but Paris will eventually overshadow PSG and wipe it off the map.”
One of the first additions made by the collaboration between Red Bull and Arnault is to appoint Mario Gomez, the emblematic striker of the German national team, as one of the visible faces of the project. Behind the scenes, since there is still no official announcement, the former Stuttgart and Bayern forward will be one of the key figures in the early years of Paris FC, in which he will have to apply the knowledge of Red Bull, but without taking anything away the identity of the capital club, since the Arnaults, unlike other teams, such as Salzburg and Leipzig, have not at any time wanted the second team of Paris to become a case of multi-ownership and, moreover, to lose its position idiosyncrasy this could have led to A crisis among the fans, many of them revolted after the takeover of PSG by Qatar was formalized in 2011.
Klopp and Paris FC
Paris will become increasingly famous for Jürgen Klopp, who will attend the match between Paris FC and Amiens on January 11. The former Liverpool manager, appointed director of football at the Red Bull conglomerate, will closely monitor the progress of a project that has France excited. , since a Paris derby has not been played in Ligue 1 for almost forty years and it was with the failed project of Racing Matra, the first rich club in Paris, that Paris Saint-Germain faced Paris Saint-Germain before it was in a historical crisis that it has spiraled into (it has currently regained its name, Racing Club de France, and is in National 3, the French fifth division).
Red Bull wants Paris FC to become one of the pioneering projects in French football and its first goal is not to fail during the next winter transfer window. The Parisian team will receive a cash injection that it will use to strengthen its squad and hopefully return to Ligue 1, before taking out the checkbook to strengthen many strategic points and definitively establish itself in a category that it has since the end never experienced in the seventies.
When the club split from the merger with PSG, the current giant of French football coincidentally started its journey in the third division and PFC in the first, before Paris Saint-Germain settled in Ligue 1 and relegated its little brother and a suffered defeat. major crisis. In the French capital they hope to see a derby that can spark a rivalry that was hardly fleeting in the decade of the 1970s.
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