A joker meme has circulated with the photo of Hamilton, PSG’s latest signing … to take the bus. Very possibly it is inspired by a joke that L’Équipe pulled years ago; one fan said to another: “Madrid have also signed Beckham”, to which the other replied: “And Schumacher to take the bus.” Beckham was the fourth galactic, preceded by Figo, Zidane and Ronaldo, completing a formidable galaxy in which there were others who were close to his excellence: Raúl, Roberto Carlos and Casillas. Now there are no ‘Galacticos’, but ‘Galactiques’, which are three. Messi, Neymar and Mbappé, accompanied by another handful of very notable players.
This fabulous concentration of talent marks for the first time that we can remember the greatest brilliance of football in Paris, a city in which for many years fans of this sport suffered. Paris saw football rather as a ‘provincial’ thing. It has been a long time since Canal + France tried to elevate it, buying PSG precisely, but it has only been now, with the excessive capital of Qatar and the blind eye of UEFA, that it has reached a dimension of a unique team. It can be said that he has the first three players in the world (Cristiano is fading) and that only Haaland would be missing to complete the poker.
I am curious to know what the performance of this team will be, which has spent years in the effort to win the Champions League, without which you are nobody. Personally, I enjoyed like crazy with the time of the Madrid Galacticos (it was this newspaper that launched the term, by the way), but that was prematurely undone in a world of vanities. That led me to think that the galactics, better one by one: Cristiano at Madrid, Messi at Barça. (Neymar fled from his shadow). PSG exhibitions can be expected in Ligue 1, which is very small, but we will have to see their performance in the upper reaches of the Champions League.