Today, in Europe, a shadow squad of footballers is forming.
These are players who might be playing for Paris Saint-Germain, but who were let go
during the last decade. This group gets larger every year and, today, is enormously valuable.
So, here are €437m worth of players that PSG allowed to get away.
*title*
Some ground rules before we start. The qualifying condition is that a player has to have spent time
in PSG’s academy. Players who transferred, didn’t get much gametime, and then subsequently left do
not count. So, players like Goncalo Guedes and Lucas Digne do not count, but there are many
others who do. And, by including a player on this list, we are not necessarily saying the
club should have retained the player. Elite clubs all have to make difficult decisions to balance
their squad. In PSG’s case, those decisions have simply resulted in the following list.
And the first player on it is Mike Maignan (45mEuros)
Maignan is now at AC Milan and has become one of the best ‘keepers in the world. Before Serie A,
though, and before becoming the natural heir to Hugo Lloris in the French national team,
he spent six years at PSG, joining the club at the age of 13. He was sold to
Lille for just £1m in 2015 without ever making a Ligue1 appearance.
Adrien Rabiot (40mEuros) made plenty of appearances – over 160 of them,
in Ligue 1 and the Champions League – but he ran his contract down and left on a free in 2019,
when he was just 24. Rabiot had a troubled time at PSG and suffered
disciplinary issues and suspensions, but – now at Juventus – there’s no question that
the best years of his career have come away from Parc des Princes.
The same is true of Ferland Mendy (25mEuros). He spent eight years at PSG as a boy,
but would actually break into senior football with Le Havre. Lyon would
sign him for a €5m pittance in 2017, then flip him to Real Madrid for the
better part of €50m two years later. And while PSG haven’t won the Champions League,
Mendy very much has done – he started the 2022 final against Liverpool that Real would win 1-0.
New Aston Villa signing Moussa Diaby (50mEuros) did make the first team at PSG – but only
briefly. He played over 1000 Ligue1 minutes for the club in the 2018-19 season, but was
stuck behind Angel Di Maria, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe for a place in the
forward three positions and departed for Bayer Leverkusen for just €15m the following summer.
Kingsley Coman (65mEuros) has spent almost his entire career away from France and Paris. He
was in the PSG academy for almost a decade, but made just three league appearances before
leaving on a free transfer in 2014 and moving to Juventus. He would later leave for Bayern
Munich where he too would win the Champions League, ironically beating PSG in the final.
Moussa Dembele’s (12mEuros) career didn’t quite scale the same heights. Or follow the same
direction. He actually left PSG when he was 16, deciding to join Fulham’s academy in 2012. He’d
play in the Premier League, later joining Celtic in Scotland too, before returning to France,
and Lyon, where he would score semi-prolifically for five seasons before moving to Saudi Arabia.
Timothy Weah (14mEuros) made his PSG breakthrough the same season that Neymar arrived, in 2017-18.
Ultimately, he would play just six times for the club before being loaned to Celtic and,
eventually, sold to Lille in 2019 for just €10 in 2019. He’s now won more
than 30 caps for the USMNT and, in the summer of 2023, signed for Adrien Rabiot’s Juventus.
Yacine Adli (8mEuros) is also in Italy – but with AC Milan. The rangy,
cultured playmaker joined PSG when he was 13, but would play just 13 league minutes
for the club before joining Bordeaux for €5m in 2019. His best days are clearly yet to come.
As are Arnaud Kalimuendo’s (22mEuros). He was just 10 when he joined PSG and was born in
Paris. He’s another who would barely play for the senior team though and, instead,
had to make his name out on loan, during two seasons spent at Lens. Having proven
that he could score goals at Ligue1 level, he was then sold to Rennes for €20m in 2022.
In the summer of 2023, he also scored one of
the goals of the tournament at the European U21 Championship,
and – still just 21 years of age – is one of the most highly touted young forwards in Europe.
There are others, like Crystal Palace’s Odsonne Edouard (15mEuros) and Leicester
City’s Boubakary Soumare (20mEuros), who were never likely to become first team players at PSG,
but have still had successful careers elsewhere.
Matteo Guendouzi (25mEuros) fits into the same category. He left the club
at 14 and joined Lorient. Later, Arsenal. After a profitable spell back in Ligue1,
he joined Lazio in Serie A in the summer of 2023.
Jonathan Ikone (16mEuros) is already in Italy. He’s playing for Fiorentina,
having been signed from Lille in 2022. He spent eight years at PSG as a boy,
but was sold for just €5m when he was just 20.
And lastly: Christopher Nkunku (80mEuros), the most valuable player on this list.
Nkunku has just moved to Chelsea, in the Premier League, but he was born in the suburbs of Paris.
He joined PSG in his early teens and – really as a midfielder – made nearly 80 appearances
for the club. He would be sold for just €13m to RB Leipzig in 2019 and would cap
four highly successful years by being voted the Bundesliga’s Player of the Season in
2022 and then finishing the 2022-23 season as the division’s top-scorer. By any definition,
Nkunku is now world class and an asset that any team in Europe would want.