Dark Posted August 23, 2020 Posted August 23, 2020 (edited) The last time a team won the Champions League for the first time was eight years ago. Chelsea beat Bayern Munich on penalties and raised the ‘orejona’ after obsessively tempting it for almost a decade. It was the heyday of the British club, it had never gone this far. Never before have I spent so much to be the best in Europe. They were nine years of millionaire investments. In July 2003, Russian mogul Roman Abramovich bought the London club for 140 million pounds, according to the Independent newspaper. About 185 million dollars to change. Crazy for the time. Chelsea was not a po[CENSORED]r team and every season they fought the Premier League half table. It was not one of his oil wells, but with 36 years Abramóvich saw another business in football. In ten years, according to the BBC, the businessman disbursed 683 million 750 thousand pounds, which in turn amounts to US $ 761 million. The result? 12 titles. A feat for a team that, before the Abramóvich era, had achieved only 10 trophies in 98 years of existence. The Champions League, however, was the dream come true. Eight years later, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) appears as the simile of Chelsea. And again Bayern is presented as the last obstacle that separates it from glory. Question of money? Nasser Al Khelaifi, the owner of PSG, lives his own dream. "Since 2011, the dream was the Champions League and now we are close to achieving it," he told RMC Sport. "We deserve this trophy," he said. Al Khelaifi is Chairman of Qatar Sports Investment (QSI), the sports investment subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority. This is an investment holding company that buys everything that seems profitable to it. It owns the beIN Media Group chain and the Miramax film production company. In 2011, QSI acquired the French team for US $ 59 million. At that time, PSG had not qualified for a Champions League for six years. He had barely been champion of Ligue 1 - the French First Division championship - twice, he won three league cups and only once did he win the defunct Recopa de Europa. It was not a winning club like Saint-Etienne, Lyon or Monaco. But, in Al Khelaifi's eyes, it was the perfect source of income. "Earning a lot of money with a soccer club is not very complicated," he told El País newspaper in 2013, when he was 37 years old. Although he forgot to mention that you also have to spend a lot of money. By 2020, according to Marca, PSG has invested 1,268 million euros in 43 players. For the Argentine Angel Di María he paid 63 million euros to Manchester United; for Zlatan Ibrahimovic he disbursed 21 million euros; for the Uruguayan Edinson Cavani he paid 64 million euros. And for the Brazilian Neymar, his current star, he had no complexes in paying 222 million euros to take him from Barcelona to Paris. Al Khelaifi was a tennis player and he was not the best. His highest position in the world ranking was over 500. But when asked about his success, he says he owes it to tennis. Sport opened the door to the world. German giant The Canadian Alphonso Davies, the revelation of the Champions 2020, was discovered in 2016 by the computer that Bayern Munich uses to identify their tailings. The club paid the Vancouver Whitecaps € 17 million for striker Davies. In him they saw a potential that would be better used as a winger. And they were not wrong. In 2017, Bayern signed 22-year-old Serge Gnabry for just $ 9 million. This season, in the Bundesliga, the attacker scored 12 goals. And in the Champions League, neither Barcelona nor Lyon could avoid their annotations. Bayern, who have won the Champions League five times, have played 11 finals in this tournament, and this will be the fourth time in ten years. It is a team that knows how to win and does it respecting their style. Edited August 26, 2020 by Dr.Drako Closed Topic / Complete 24 hours. 3
Recommended Posts