Why Phillip Lahm thinks PSG is a luxury department store and not a team

MUNICH – Former Germany captain Philipp Lahm has said that Paris Saint-Germain, PSG is “not a team” as he likened the French champions to “a luxury department store” of their Qatari owners.

Lahm said in a column for weekly Die Zeit published on Wednesday that the French champions had fantastic individual players like Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi and Neymar but were underachieving as a team.

PSG are yet to win the Champions League, going out this term in the last 16 against Bayern Munich without scoring a goal.

Lahm, the chief organizer of Euro 2024 who captained Germany to the 2014 World Cup title and Munich to the treble in 2013, suggested that PSG in their current form are nothing but a showcase of their owners’ wealth and their political intentions.

“This exorbitantly expensive team resembles a luxury department store that displays its most valuable exhibits, which are marvelled at by everyone but which no one can afford,” Lahm said.

“It guarantees high attention and spectacle, but only works economically. When so much money is spent but the opposite of quality is achieved, it is not good.”

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“Politically, the PSG investment may have paid off. Football’s popularity makes it a suitable instrument for other purposes … That is the way of the world.

“Football, however, is something else. Great teams, with which people identify, develop in a process. This can only succeed with cooperation, solidarity and community. These are the values of Europe, but not those of PSG.

On the pitch, Lahm said that PSG “are not a team” as they “play uninspired and offers the audience piecemeal.”

“They are all among the most famous footballers on the planet and have fans and followers all over the globe. But nothing remotely supernatural emerged in the two duels with Bayern Munich. Nothing that arouses enthusiasm, nothing that you want to be a part of.

“You must feel sorry for the many PSG fans who travelled to Munich,” Lahm said.