On March 7, 2019, the day after the elimination in the round of 16 second leg of the Champions League against Manchester United, PSG had a hangover.
“I feel bad, the whole team feels bad, Thomas Tuchel confided the following Monday.
The first two days, a lot of players would have liked to see the season come to an end and go on vacation.
But this is not an option.
"His team must get back in the saddle to face Dijon, in a late match.
She will not make any details (4-0), with goals from Marquinhos, Kylian Mbappé, Angel Di Maria and Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting.
But the first hours after the shock, this trauma of this affront to the taste of Barcelona remorse, tell of wounded, touched, shot men.
At home, Thomas Tuchel turns in circles, no longer shaves, seems completely knocked out.
with his relatives.
His one-season contract extension, negotiated before the match, will not be called into question by the Paris staff, pending decisions from Doha, the club's shareholder.
At home, Kylian Mbappé locks himself in his room and cries, disgusted like all the holders of that evening.
Soon enough, the club worried about Thilo Kehrer, author of a huge blunder during the meeting.
Nobody recognizes him the days after, the familiars of the Lodge camp calling him a "zombie".
The depression wins all floors of the club, each service, the employees are masked, as if the virus of defeat and ridicule had contaminated PSG, improbable loser against the B team of Manchester United, dismantled in the following round by Barcelona (4-0 on both sets).
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Quickly, the teams of communicators of the Parisian formation organized themselves to spread a clear message while the press banged on Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, the president, on Thomas Tuchel and his lack of seriousness in the preparation of the match, or on the friable minds of the players, paralyzed by the challenge of passing the round of 16, the end of ambitions for three editions.
Ah, if only Paris had a sports director at such times!
But no, there's just Antero Henrique, the club's super recruiter and salesperson, the man who never addresses the group.
His last feat of arms dates back to January 2019. He found Leandro Paredes, bought 47 million euros, first mate against Man U, on March 6.
His transfer dragged on from the Zenit Saint Petersburg against the backdrop of numerous and nebulous commissions.
From Antero Henrique in the text.
PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, former sports director Antero Henrique and coach Thomas Tuchel (from left to right).
LP / Arnaud Journois
Communication is therefore clear: no member of this magical trio, Al-Khelaïfi-Tuchel-Henrique, is threatened.
In the secrecy of the palace of the emir, nobody knows what is fomented, to what point so-and-so will be threatened, sacrificed then caught by the sleeve, comforted with the tip of the lips for lack of anything better.
But soon enough, Prince Tamin ben Hamad Al Thani, not yet 39 years old at the time, wants change, he does not support the status quo advocated by the Parisian antenna.
Leonardo called back to the bedside
He asks for heads and obtains that of Henrique at the same time as he directly participates in the return of a man whose aura remains intact: Leonardo, no longer in the odor of sanctity at AC Milan where he has again become the time of a season sports director within a Lombard house in the midst of a management and shareholding crisis.
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Leonardo's name remains associated with the success of the first years of the Qatari project, with the high-sounding names that suddenly populate the corridors of the Parc des Princes: Carlo Ancelotti, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Motta, Alex, Maxwell, Thiago Silva, Marco Verratti, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Edinson Cavani.
The Brazilian sporting director returns smoothly, his appointment being just the subject of a press release.
The period does not lend itself to petit fours and sumptuous press conferences in one of the palaces on the right bank of Paris where Leo would amaze the gallery with a show of which he has the secret.
He moved to the Brach hotel, a five-star hotel in the west of the capital, where, between two meetings, he could meet the actress Valérie Bonneton, the model Estelle Lefébure or even the trainer Rolland Courbis, who in the fitness room, which on the roof top to enjoy a cocktail, which in the restaurant of the establishment.
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Black shoes, black jeans, black T-shirt and black jacket - his usual dress code -, the new sports director multiplies the interviews.
Thiago Motta, coach of the departing U 19, visits him in his suite.
The former midfielder tells him about his vision of the club (he who still played until the end of the 2018 season), his latent war with Antero Henrique that he could never bear.
Leonardo wants to understand where he has (re) set foot.
Six years after his departure, the club has changed a lot and can no longer afford to spend in a pharaonic way because of accounts still weighed down by the dream operation of the summer of 2017, the double coming of two geniuses of the game, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, against 402 million euros.
The leader turns on one of his many phones and calls his trusted men, such as Olivier Létang, the former deputy sports director he himself had appointed, chased away in 2017 by the close guard of Nasser Al-Khelaïfi , another satellite conflict of a company which multiplies them.
Létang then runs the Stade Rennais and warns him against the president's men, not always inclined to let other than the Qatari take the media light.
The urgency is elsewhere.
Leonardo is back, but there is like fire at home PSG.
Let's say that the fuse is ready and the slightest spark can ignite an institution shaken by the elimination against Manchester United, the loss of the Coupe de France final against Rennes, the pitiful premature exit in the Coupe de la Ligue.
In summer 2019, Neymar wants to leave PSG to return to Barça.
The operation, impossible, will fail.LP / Arnaud Journois
Behind the scenes, another explosive cocktail threatens.
After only two years in Paris, Neymar and his clique wish to leave and attempt a hypothetical return to Barcelona under a leadership that the number 10 clan has left and against which it is multiplying the trials in the courts to recover allegedly unpaid premiums.
Leonardo is playing on velvet: he initially claims 300 million euros for the crack auriverde in order to obtain around 220 million euros, his purchase price.
An amount that Barcelona obviously does not have, the Catalans having just dropped some 120 million euros on Antoine Griezmann.
Worse, the board of Barça is divided, between leaders who do not want to hear about the comeback of a player who, according to them, spat on the club and those eager to please Lionel Messi, necessarily happy to see Neymar again .
Josep Maria Bartomeu sails between the two camps, unable to reconcile them.
Mbappé on the go?
Another underground file stirs the mysteries of the Factory, where Leonardo recovers a desk.
He is divided between the club's headquarters and his house in the 16th arrondissement, where he has settled with his family.
After a declaration to the UNFP trophies at the explosion heard as far as Doha and during which he calls for more "responsibilities", Kylian Mbappé is not sure whether to stay at the club either.
England are giving him soft eyes, starting with Jürgen Klopp, the Liverpool manager with whom all great players dream of working.
The world champion, top scorer in the championship with 33 goals, the only title won by the club at the end of the season, wonders if Paris remains the right place to win the Champions League, his obsession.
Thomas Tuchel, happy to have lost Henrique but far from rejoicing in recovering Leonardo, closely follows this double soap opera of the possible loss of his two cracks the same summer.
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But Mbappé, a true lover of PSG, does not want to start an arm wrestling when he quickly understands that the door is double closed for him.
Tuchel no longer has to worry: the management refuses the departure of the Frenchman and knows that Neymar is untransferable since Barcelona cannot afford it.
Leonardo takes advantage of the moment to assert his authority by targeting Neymar at the Loges camp on his return from vacation, stipulating the end of privileges, moods, under penalty of leaving the club in case of offers satisfactory.
Power is embodied on the back of Neymar, who has done nothing so far to blend into the background, between wounds galore, history of manners with a compatriot in a chic hotel near the Arc de Triomphe, insults to the PSG-Manchester referee or a collision with an aggressive supporter after the lost final of the Coupe de France.
Obviously, the Brazilian prodigy does not take it well.
His influence in the cloakroom remains intact, with partners still under the spell of his extraordinary technique and this festive character.
For better or for worse, Neymar is a kid who refuses to grow up and his pals love him for that too.
The establishment of the Republic of players
The gamer planet revolves around him and Leonardo will learn it the hard way.
He returns to the charge after a three-fold birthday drink - Edinson Cavani, Mauro Icardi and Angel Di Maria, all born in February - and subject to the objectives of social networks just after the defeat (2-1) in the first leg against Dortmund in 8th of Champions League final.
But this time, the close guard of the Ney, Keylor Navas in the lead, puts the stop and defends the number 10, even if it means opposing the big boss of the sports field.
The episode reveals both the great camaraderie in the workforce and the distance or even the break between this troop and its leaders.
It grows during confinement with three men at the helm: Jean-Claude Blanc, the deputy general manager, Victoriano Melero, the general secretary, and Leonardo, the sporting director.
The trio calls on the players to give up part of their salaries, the health crisis, its suspended or stopped competitions, its closed doors, its unpaid TV rights significantly impacting the finances of the SME.
Passed to partial unemployment, Thiago Silva and co exchange on the common WhatsApp thread of the players: they are ready to make an effort if the money left feeds associations or sectors in direct contact with the pandemic, such as hospitals in Paris.
But this small world does not manage to find an agreement and when Nasser Al-Khelaïfi thunders at RMC that the players "know their responsibilities", it is over, the discussion ends, the renunciation of salaries becomes impossible.
Parc des Princes (Paris), March 11.
Qualifying against Dortmund is a turning point.
LP / Arnaud Journois
This solidarity extends its field of wrestling to the sporting side.
It is during the 55 days of confinement decided by the State that the men of Tuchel, dispatched between South America and Europe, with some depressive states for some like Angel Di Maria, remained in the Paris region, promise each other to do everything possible to win the Champions League.
It must end in the unprecedented format of a tournament on a dry match from the quarter-finals.
This pact of PSG players also finds its source in the ubiquitous evening then the magical night of March 11, 2020, when the team, in the closed door of the Parc des Princes shattered by the chants of 4,000 supporters gathered outside in a very "contact case" attitude, finally frees itself from the round of 16 by stumbling Dortmund (2-0) of Lucien Favre.
This is the esprit de corps and fusion that has animated this group for months.
The curse of the first knockout match after the group stage is defeated.
The Parisian training will push the delight until reaching the first Champions League final in its history, on a birthday evening, that of its 50 years.
We only have one life and this PSG has decided to live it to the full, despite adversity, first and foremost this coronavirus which hinders our existence.
Above all, he chased away from his intimate setting the demons of Manchester United, who returns this Tuesday (9 p.m.) to the scene of his package.
Paris finally no longer fears anything.
