Last tango in Paris (Saint-Germain)

by Chris Woolfrey

On Saturday 30 April 2011 I watched my first game of live football in another country. Paris Saint-Germain, whose squad includes the talented Nenê but in terms of “tourism-football” boasts veteran French midfielders Ludovic Giuly and Claude Makélelé, beat mid-table Valenciennes comfortably, keeping up their tradition of being good-for-their-league-but-not-really-good-enough, keeping up a slim (at the time of writing – Ed) chance of winning the title in Ligue 1.

It was an entertaining game. Interestingly, at least for an English viewer, Valenciennes played good, passing football; so too did Paris-SG, with Giuly often involved in the first half and Nenê also playing a vital role. For a neutral, the first half was as good as any, with little in the way of decent goal scoring opportunities but a refreshing prevalence for interchange between midield, defence and attack, and for intelligent passing, with a neglect for deep-lying defenses or long balls.

And the game, so unlike a number of English league matches, flowed. The most striking thing was that, for a game with a lot of fouls, the ball seemed hardly to stop: every time the referee stopped play, the closest player – usually a midfielder – simply stopped the ball and passed simply to the player nearest him, the tempo of the game resumed; free-kicks were a pause rather than an event.

That is something unheard of in England. As a point of comparison, if in terms of quality within its league, this had been this season’s Premier League, we might have been looking at a Rory Delap-led Stoke trying to unsettle – with a brand of football that doesn’t much please the neutrals – a team around the quality of Liverpool or Spurs.

Here though, both teams played, and played according to what is, rightly or wrongly, described as good-looking football; good passing, steady tempo. That, for a neutral, is something you’d struggle to see in a number of matches in England; here, it seemed normal, though I confess ignorance on that matter, with our fellow Paris-SG-ers simply watching the game as if it was any other, standard league match.

PSG were ahead within 10 minutes, thanks to a lovely 18-yard volley from Nenê, after an admittedly scrambled build up; twelve minutes later they added a second. In a game that Paris-SG never looked like losing, Valenciennes managed to bring the game to 2-1 at the interval. That understandably angered a number of fans; the usual shouts and jeers, the usual shaking of heads and slumped frames. But it was quite astonishing, as a neutral, to see just how affected the fans seemed to be, as if this were written into stone before the game: PSG, always good but never that good, had managed to concede (even if it was the best goal of the match) to a team that was far inferior to them, and far outplayed so far, yet again.

Football has a way of ingratiating itself in pop culture, whether it’s application is truthful or not. In anticipation of watching Paris Saint-Germain the game, I asked two Parisians whether I’d struggle for tickets given that I was trying to buy them on the day of the match, only for one to laugh, a genuine laugh.

“You won’t have any problems with tickets,” he said. “There will be many empty seats…PSG is very rich but they are rubbish, and nobody likes them.”

PSG are part of a running joke in Paris and in French football in general. Perennial underachievers, they’re among Ligue 1’s biggest spenders and have a large city-orientated fan base; even if you’re not a die-hard football fan, it’s easy to choose which team you’d want to watch if you’re going to go to a few matches a year, if there’s only one big team in the city.

It’d be similar to if the only big team in London was Arsenal: yes, they underachieve, yes they spend (see Pay As You Play for proof that, despite popular opinion, this is certainly the case), and yes, their staple fan-base is hungry for silverware, but they have a nice stadium and they attract some of the best players for their league, so there’s a pull for the casual fan.

A casual fan, when it comes to French football, I certainly am. So too, I can only assume, was the Parisian who was more than willing to indulge in the culture of self-deprecation attached to being a Parisian in Paris who, if they were going to like football at all, would support Paris Saint-Germain. To that extent – and wanting, having only been in the city for two days, with little French to my name, to involve myself in the culture that this team promoted – I joined in as far as I could with that PSG bashing. If we were both casual fans, it didn’t matter: an interest in football, however feigned, often makes sure that people bond.

Maybe all this explains a lot about the beleaguered behaviour of a number of fans, including one quiet and solemn man who never shouted once, but simply shook his head and whispered tragically under his breath every time PSG got the ball and didn’t score an incredible goal with it.

But the football was good. After the break, the tempo slowed significantly, and both teams resorted a little more to long balls; in fact the overall pattern of the game, from the point of view of both sides, resembled an England game, where an incredibly fast pace, often not yielding results, gives way to frustration, direct play.

Interestingly, given that neither of these team is the best in France, what might have been in play was the difference between English and French football as a macrocosm: not altogether different in their styles of play nor their personnel, France looked elegant in their 1998 World Cup win and full of guile in their 2000 European Championship victory, in a way that England, who can sometimes look bright but will generally fade very quickly, never really do. It would be interesting to see Marseilles, Lille or Lyon play PSG, in order to see if the Parisian outfit peeled away as the game wore on, where the French champions and others might embrace the game in their stride.

That second half produced little in the way of football or chances, and it took many broken attacks and shaking of Parisian heads before, with minutes to go, the ball was bundled into the net to make it 3-1. With the game drawing to a close, the referee’s whistle blew and PSG fans cheered. Strangely, as the players and fans emptied the stadium, a familiar tune rang over the P.A system; and fans began singing “Allez, Paris Saint-Germain”, to the tune of The Village People’s ‘Go West’. Very strange, indeed.

And what was stranger is that, despite the game being good, attractive, fairly played and smooth, both teams, given the quality of Ligue 1 in its current state, might struggle to beat the Premier League’s top ten: for all the beauty and warmth here, Newcastle, with the irritating prevalence of Alan Pardew in the manager’s seat, would no doubt beat them both.

Nonetheless, with two teams from the same league allowed to battle on their own terms, this was a far better match than most in the Premier League, where teams are of a higher quality. For that reason, let’s hope that Stoke beat Man City in this season’s FA Cup, so that when they’re hammered in the Europa League, we can remember that a lot of good players grinding out wins in their own league isn’t particularly good at the best of times, and is patently embarrassing when it comes up against a footballing aesthetic which can go for something nicer, not to mention dispatch with their opponents.

Unfortunately, it probably won’t be PSG: Stoke would, quite possibly, beat them. And there’d be plenty of tickets available, you’d presume, for a game between a team mocked by it’s own city’s inhabitants and one nobody in Paris has heard of, as my Parisian friend in the café happily told me.

(photo via graceyheartphotography on Flickr)

France, French Ligue 1, Paris St Germain