Paris Saint-Germain have emerged as candidates to purchase the Stade de France however the Qatar-owned membership’s precedence stays securing possession of the Parc des Princes, their historic residence within the French capital.
PSG are candidates to accumulate the 80,000-capacity, government-owned nationwide stadium located in Saint-Denis, simply to the north of Paris itself, after a primary deadline for potential consumers to return ahead handed on Thursday afternoon.
The brand new house owners would take over when the present lease on the stadium, which would be the centrepiece of subsequent 12 months’s Paris Olympics, expires in July 2025.
The value of the Stade de France, which was constructed for the 1998 World Cup finals, was estimated at 647 million euros ($712m) by the French authorities in 2021.
The Stade de France is the house of the French nationwide soccer and rugby groups and is because of host the ultimate of this 12 months’s Rugby World Cup in October.
French press experiences have indicated that each FIFA and UEFA are additionally excited by shopping for the stadium, but world soccer’s governing physique has denied doing so and UEFA has not commented.
It’s understood that whoever acquires the stadium might want to perform important refurbishment work.
Ought to PSG grow to be the proprietor, their plans would come with bringing the stands nearer to the pitch — they’re at the moment separated by a working observe — and decreasing the capability to 70,000, in response to a membership supply.
– Renovations required –
Nonetheless, PSG look like trying on the stadium as a back-up possibility as a result of negotiations with Paris Metropolis Corridor over the Parc des Princes have to date not proved fruitful.
They’ve performed on the stadium, located within the metropolis’s upmarket sixteenth arrondissement and with a capability of round 47,000, since 1973.
A membership supply instructed AFP that purchasing the Parc des Princes remained PSG’s “plan primary, two and three, and shopping for the Stade de France is quantity 4”.
The opposite chance is constructing a brand new stadium, maybe on the Saint-Cloud racecourse simply exterior Paris or additional out of the capital at Poissy, the place the membership is at the moment constructing a brand new coaching centre.
PSG have mentioned they need to increase and renovate the Parc des Princes, bringing the capability as much as 58,000 at an estimated value of some 500 million euros.
Within the eyes of the membership’s Qatari house owners, Qatar Sports activities Investments, that work might solely be made potential if PSG grew to become the house owners of the stadium.
“We opened the door to the potential of promoting the stadium to our membership as a result of it’s true that if you happen to take a look at the financial mannequin of the largest golf equipment, virtually all of them personal their stadiums,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo instructed radio station RFI on Thursday.
Nonetheless, she added: “There are additionally costs that have to be set and should correspond to the property in query.”
She mentioned that the membership had supplied 38 million euros to purchase the stadium, a determine she described as “ridiculous”.
Regardless of that, Hidalgo additionally mentioned she thought PSG wouldn’t find yourself leaving.
The authorities have mentioned they’re open to discovering different options however PSG affirm that they are going to solely return to the negotiating desk whether it is to debate shopping for the stadium, which stays their “precedence”.
“Like all golf equipment on the European scene, we have to personal our stadium,” the membership supply mentioned.
That may reassure PSG supporters who don’t need to transfer.
A banner that has been put up close to the stadium reads: “PSG was born in Saint-Germain, grew up on the Parc des Princes, died below QSI and can be buried on the Stade de France”.
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