PSG and Paris mayor see red in stadium dispute
Paris Saint-Germain chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo were once seen regularly smiling together in the VIP seats of the Parc des Princes stadium, but are no longer on speaking terms after a series of clashes. At the heart of the quarrel is Khelaifi's desire to buy the 48,000-seater stadium from the city, which Hidalgo's leftwing adminstration has blocked over the past year, most recently in a vote by the city council on February 6.
"We've wasted years wanting to buy the Parc," Khelaifi said angrily last week on the sidelines of a meeting of European football's governing body UEFA. "It's over now. We want to move from the Parc." In other acidic comments, he suggested last month that racism was playing a part - "is it because we are Arabs?" he asked the Parisien newspaper - and he has called for "respect" from the mayor's office.
The stakes are high for PSG which wants to follow the model of other major European football clubs by developing hospitality facilities at the stadium and increasing its capacity to 60,000 seats. The row underlines the prominent role of public authorities in French sports where even elite clubs rarely possess their own grounds, unlike in Britain or Germany where private ownership is the norm.
PSG signed a 30-year lease for the Parc in 2013 - two years after the Qatari state-backed takeover of the club - meaning they are committed in theory to 2043 unless there are clauses allowing them to break the contract.
For the city, seeing PSG leave would be a disaster, with the capital lacking another sports club capable of selling out the Parc's vast steeply banked stands in the upmarket 16th district of western Paris. "We don't want to carry on talking to PSG through the media," Paris'
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