PSG and Barcelona: A very modern rivalry

“ There’s a lot of history and there’s also a lot which has gone on behind the scenes ,” Jules Koundé said ahead of Barcelona’s visit to Paris Saint-Germain tonight in the quarter-final of the Champions League. It’s a game that like all good rivalries has come to represent something greater. 

The fans of both supporters might call it a battle for the soul of football, the modern weight of the nouveau riche versus the historic and storied institution; or as PSG fans might point towards, the defenders against the fight to change European football versus the polebearers for the Super League. 

However, it’s been a battle that has been fought more in the boardrooms of the two clubs than out on the pitch. The sides have only met each other a handful of times, the first coming in 1995, with each side winning four and drawing four of these occasions. The acrimony, while born on the pitch, matured in the sniping press conferences, the transfer battles, and the courtroom decisions of the Super League. 

La Remontada, the night when Barcelona overturned a 4-0 deficit to eliminate PSG from the Champions League, can come some way to explaining the beginnings of the rivalry. It was to be the French side’s crowning moment, the game in the Champions League where they developed from an expensive project dominating Ligue 1 to a side that could embarrass a team consisting of Lionel Messi, Luís Suarez, and Neymar. 

And yet a 6-1 defeat, appeared to confirm their worst anxieties, that they were the laughingstock of the European elite, a team considered incapable of challenging the hegemonic status of the more traditional power bases in the game. It set the foundations for a project that has in many ways shaped modern football when PSG fresh