PSG: When Talent Stopped Being Above the Club
Kylian Mbappé left PSG on a free transfer in the summer of 2024. Two seasons later, PSG had won two consecutive Champions League titles. That is a brutal fact, and also a dangerous one, because it can make the story look much easier than it really is.
Kylian Mbappé left PSG on a free transfer in the summer of 2024. Two seasons later, PSG had won two consecutive Champions League titles. That is a brutal fact, and also a dangerous one, because it can make the story look much easier than it really is.
I wrote the core idea of this article before the final was played. After PSG beat Arsenal on penalties on Saturday, I updated the facts, but not the argument. The result makes the timing better, of course, but it is not the reason for the analysis. I would have written the same piece if PSG had lost, because the interesting question is not one match. The interesting question is what changed inside the club before the results confirmed the story.
For years, PSG tried to build the most spectacular collection of football talent in Europe. Messi, Neymar, Mbappé, and before them Ibrahimovic. Amazing players, global attention, commercial power and a content machine working almost every week. Don’t get me wrong, star power sells, attracts sponsors and gives a club a global voice. But there is a difference between building attention and building an organisation.
In this article we will analyse this from a business lens. Because PSG is not only a football story. It is a case about what happens when an organisation with extreme talent tries to become less dependent on individuals and more dependent on culture, alignment and club architecture.
Introduction: From Star Power to Club Architecture
The easy story is that PSG stopped signing stars and started winning. I don’t think that is correct.
PSG still has elite talent. Maybe not the same type of public superstar as Messi, Neymar or Mbappé, but still talent at the highest level. The difference, as I see it, is not the amount of talent. The difference is the place that talent occupies inside the club.
For many years, PSG looked like a club where the star was not only part of the system. The star could become bigger than the system. That can be very powerful in the short term, but it also creates concentration risk. If too much value depends on too few people, the organisation becomes fragile.
This is why I think the PSG case is interesting. Not only because Luis Enrique is a great coach, although clearly he is. The real question is whether PSG has changed the architecture of the club.
By club architecture I mean the chain that goes from the top to the bottom: ownership and presidency define the direction, the sporting director builds the squad around that direction, the coach translates it into daily standards and behaviours, and the players execute it.
Basically, PSG is a case about alignment. The club did not move from talent to no talent. It seems to have moved from talent above the club to talent inside the club.
Numbers Don’t Lie
The numbers do not prove everything, but they help separate narrative from reality.
The first contrast is Europe. During the two full seasons of the Messi, Neymar and Mbappé trio, PSG reached zero Champions League finals. In 2021/22, they were eliminated by Real Madrid in the round of 16 after the famous Bernabéu comeback. In 2022/23, Bayern knocked them out again in the round of 16, 3-0 on aggregate, without PSG scoring in either leg. In the two seasons after that era closed, PSG won two Champions League titles.
The second contrast is concentration. Early in 2022/23, one analysis calculated that 87% of PSG’s goals had been scored or assisted by one of Messi, Neymar or Mbappé. We should be careful because this was an early-season sample, not a full-season conclusion. But as a signal, it is very useful. It shows how much of the team’s production and narrative was concentrated in three players.
The third contrast is the 2025 final. PSG beat Inter 5-0, the biggest margin ever in a European Cup or Champions League final. Five goals, four different scorers: Hakimi, Doué twice, Kvaratskhelia and Mayulu. None of them belonged to the previous trio. That is not only a sporting detail. It is a symbol of a different distribution of responsibility.
The fourth data point is financial. PSG reported record revenue of €837 million for the 2024/25 season, including €367 million in commercial revenue and €175 million in matchday revenue. So, at least in the short term, the end of the superstar era did not destroy the business model.
The fifth data point is cost concentration. Mbappé’s last PSG contract was reported at €72 million gross per year, plus a €180 million signing bonus and loyalty bonuses that could take the total package to around €630 million over three years. Today, PSG’s highest-paid player is reportedly Ousmane Dembélé, at around €18 million gross per year. These figures are not perfectly comparable because one is a total superstar package and the other is annual base salary, but the direction is clear: PSG moved from a model where one player could absorb an extraordinary part of the financial, media and sporting attention, to a more balanced structure.
Business Model: Talent Inside the System
The old PSG model was not wrong. It was actually very logical.
Football has become an attention business, and a global superstar is one of the fastest ways to buy attention. A player like Messi, Neymar or Mbappé does not only improve the team. He brings media coverage, sponsors, followers, shirt sales and a story that travels faster than any institutional message from the club.
That said, there is a hidden cost. If one person becomes too important, the club starts adapting to him. Exceptions become normal. Internal power becomes informal. Other people stop challenging decisions. Little by little, the organisation can become less a system and more an orbit around one individual.
Sandra , my wife and an HR Director with 20 years of experience in an industrial company, helped me with this idea. She told me something that stuck with me: some high performers always reach their targets, but leave damage around them. People rotate, stop speaking openly or simply try to protect themselves. When that person leaves, results do not always collapse. Sometimes the organisation breathes again.
I am not saying this is what happened with any specific PSG player. That would be unfair. But as a management idea, it is very powerful. Talent is not the problem. The problem appears when the organisation cannot govern talent.
I see the same logic every day in my work. Sales, Production and Supply Chain can each be right from their own perspective and still damage the global outcome. The global optimum is not the sum of local optimums.
PSG’s new model seems to be built around that logic. The club defines the direction from the top, but execution cannot be controlled like a machine. Players still need freedom, creativity and personality. The point is not to remove autonomy. The point is to give autonomy inside a clear frame.
As I see it, this is the best description of the new PSG: centralised intent, decentralised execution.
Opportunities: If PSG Makes This Culture Real
If PSG consolidates this model, the opportunity is not only to win more trophies. The opportunity is to become a stronger institution.
A club that depends on one superstar is always exposed. If the star leaves, the narrative can collapse. If the star is injured, the team can lose confidence. If the star is unhappy, the whole environment can become unstable. If the star receives permanent exceptions, the culture becomes negotiable.
A club with culture is different. It can lose people and still continue. It can change players, change cycles and even change coaches without losing its way of working.
This is where the Apple analogy is useful. When Steve Jobs left, Apple did not become irrelevant. Tim Cook was not Steve Jobs, and he did not need to be. Part of the culture was already embedded: product obsession, design discipline, ecosystem thinking and operational excellence. The company had institutionalized part of the founder’s way of thinking.
PSG is obviously not Apple. Football is more emotional and more volatile. But the management question is similar. Can PSG become stronger than the people who built this cycle?
Two people I consulted with experience in coaching and high-performance sport gave me a similar idea from different angles: responsibility works better when people understand their mission, and commitment is much stronger when it comes from shared purpose than from fear or hierarchy. I think this fits PSG perfectly. The club does not need obedient players. It needs players who understand why their role matters.
This opens the door to a different type of elite talent. Not less talented players, but maybe lower-profile superstars: players with world-class ability, but less need to become the centre of the whole organisation.
Threats: The Risk Has Moved
Now, the uncomfortable part.
I don’t think PSG has eliminated key person risk. It may have moved it.
Before, the dependency was visible. Messi, Neymar and Mbappé were on the pitch, on the posters and in the global narrative. Now, the dependency may be less visible but still present. What happens if Luis Enrique leaves? What happens if Luis Campos, the sporting director, leaves? What happens if the next coach wants another model? What happens if the president decides that the club needs another global superstar to accelerate commercial growth again?
As I see it, this is the real test for PSG. Not whether Luis Enrique can make the team work. He has already shown that. The real question is whether PSG can keep working this way when the people who built the model are no longer there.
That is the difference between a system and a culture. A system is something a leader installs. A culture is what remains when the leader is not in the room.
There is also a regulatory threat. UEFA’s squad cost rule now limits spending on player and coach wages, transfers and agent fees to 70% of club revenue, after a phase-in period. For clubs like PSG, this matters because the old answer to many problems was simple: buy more talent. The new environment makes that more difficult. In a way, regulation pushes the club toward the same question as culture: can you improve by organizing better, not only by spending more?
There is another risk: confusing culture with comfort. High performance needs tension and uncomfortable conversations. The difference is that the tension must serve the mission, not personal status.
And there is a commercial threat. Star power is easier to sell than culture. A global superstar gives a club a face that sponsors, fans and media understand instantly. A more collective PSG may be stronger as a team, but perhaps less explosive as entertainment.
Maybe the answer is that PSG needs both: enough individual talent to remain attractive, and enough culture to avoid becoming hostage to that talent.
Moat: Culture is the Real Test
So where is PSG’s real moat?
It is not money, because PSG already had money. It is not talent, because PSG already had talent. It is not even Luis Enrique or Luis Campos, if we are talking about long-term advantage. He can be the builder of the model, but if everything depends on him, the moat is fragile. The possible moat is culture.
Sandra said something that I think is very important: talent is easier to scale than culture. Talent can be recruited, paid, trained and replaced. Culture is different. It is not created in a one-hour onboarding session. It is built through repeated behaviours, shared experiences, accepted standards and small decisions that happen every day.
This is why culture is difficult to copy. Other clubs can sign players and speak about team spirit. What they cannot copy quickly is internal trust, role clarity and commitment built over time.
The same applies to companies. Many organisations write values on the wall, but the real culture appears under pressure. Who gets promoted? Who receives exceptions? Who is tolerated despite damaging others? Who is allowed to challenge a powerful person?
Culture is not what the CEO says. Culture is what the organisation tolerates.
In a previous IQArena edition on Brentford, I argued that many clubs and companies do not fail because they lack talent or money, but because they lack process, role definition, accountability and discipline. PSG sits in a very different world from Brentford, but the exportable lesson is close. The real advantage is not having a good idea. The real advantage is making the whole organisation behave according to that idea.
If PSG has that, the moat is real. If PSG only has a brilliant cycle under Luis Enrique and Campos, the moat is still personal.
Conclusion: The Team Above the Exception
The lesson from PSG is not “do not hire stars”.
That would be naïve. Elite sport needs elite talent. Elite companies also need high performers. The best organisations are not built by average people doing average work. They are built by talented people doing difficult things together.
The lesson is different: do not let stars become the operating system.
A star should raise the ceiling of the organisation. But when everything starts depending on the star, the rest of the organisation can stop growing. People wait, hide, adapt or protect themselves. The club still has talent, but the system becomes weaker.
I experienced a small version of this in team duathlon. Most of the year it is an individual sport, but in team events the logic changes. The fastest athlete does not always go in front. Sometimes the second fastest sets the rhythm. The slowest goes protected in the middle. The strongest goes behind, pushing when needed. Nobody is placed where he looks best individually. Everyone is placed where the team moves faster.
I love that image for PSG.
The strongest person is not always the one who should be most visible. Sometimes the strongest contribution is to push someone else, protect the weaker part of the system or accept a role that makes the group better.
PSG may have reached that point. Or maybe it is still too early and we are watching a brilliant cycle under Luis Enrique and Luis Campos. I think the honest answer is that we do not know yet.
What we can say is that PSG has become a better case study. For years, it was the obvious example of star power in football. Today, it may become something more interesting: a club trying to prove that talent becomes more powerful when it stops being above the club.
That said, the final test is still pending.
Not the Champions League final. PSG already won that.
The real final test is cultural: can PSG keep this model alive when the people who created it are gone?
About the Author
Oscar Lopez is the founder of IQArena, a sports business strategy platform that turns real situations from the sports industry into strategic analysis, case-style briefings and business learning.
He has more than 20 years of experience in managerial roles in multinational companies, with a background in logistics, operations and supply chain management. He is currently developing case studies and executive learning concepts at the intersection of sport, strategy and business. His work focuses mainly on football, motorsport and endurance sports, and includes collaborations with leading business schools around the world.
He is also an endurance sports athlete, with nine years’ experience in triathlon.
Images in this article are sourced from publicly available social media and online platforms. If you are a rights holder and wish to request removal, please contact us.
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If you want to read more articles from Oscar Lopez, check out his piece on Brentford: The Hedge Fund That Plays Football.
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