It is an audience of an unusual kind that invests the vast office of Emmanuel Grégoire, first deputy mayor of Paris, this January 17 around noon. There are almost as many sports journalists present as in the press box at the Parc des Princes on the evening of a Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) match. Mr. First Deputy, yet reputed to be unfailingly serene, seems a little borrowed this time, even flanked by the 1.92 meter mirrored cabinet of his sports assistant, the former professional rugby player Pierre Rabadan. It must be said that the hour is as serious as after another elimination in the Champions League. Emmanuel Grégoire summoned the media to take stock, at least to try, of an extremely tense situation: the Town Hall and PSG are less and less in agreement as to the future of the Parc des Princes and are embarking on more and more balloons in the face.
The case is both simple and inextricable, like a neighborhood dispute: the stadium belongs to the City, which rents it to PSG for a modest sum (about 2 million euros per year), while Qatar Sports Investments ( QSI), owner of the club, only wants to undertake expensive expansion work (estimated at 500 million euros, in order to increase the capacity from 47,000 to 58,000 seats) if he becomes the owner of the pregnant. Two days earlier, the mayor of Paris said in The Parisianboth officially and unexpectedly, with his proverbial outspokenness: “The Parc des Princes is no longer for sale. » A sudden halt to weeks of discussions, then frying on the line, then a long angry silence.
To get an idea of the general atmosphere, just remember the last time Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, the Qatari president of PSG, spoke about Emmanuel Grégoire. It was in The team, December 3, 2022: “He talks too much. In front of us, he tells us something, and in the newspaper his version is different. » Or to exhume these few related pleasantries expressed in various international media, at the same time: “The mayor forces PSG to leave her house”or “They are pushing for us to leave. » A stroke of blood in the middle of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar (November 20-December 18), when this same Nasser Al-Khelaïfi was convinced that, despite Anne Hidalgo’s repeated promises on an upcoming transfer of the Park to the club, the latter had finally, for an unknown reason, diametrically changed her mind.
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