Paris St.-Germain has dominated home competitors for practically a decade, its group strengthened yearly by the signings of pricey stars from world wide. But the title it covets most, the Champions League, stays elusive.
That description applies, after all, to the Paris St.-Germain males’s soccer group. But it additionally suits the membership’s handball group, its sporting doppelgänger of types. Like the extra distinguished soccer group, the handball aspect by no means appears to lose in France. And just like the soccer group, it simply can’t appear to recover from its last hurdle in European competitors.
The males’s soccer group has gained seven of the final 9 French league titles and is sort of sure to win this 12 months as nicely. But its European document is spotty for a group of its huge wealth: It has appeared in 10 straight Champions Leagues, however has just one runner-up end, in 2020, and one different semifinal look to point out for it.
The handball group wears the identical blue uniforms and has — maddeningly, when you’re P.S.G. — trod the identical path. It has gained seven straight league titles, and this 12 months there hardly appears to be any level in watching its home video games: It is 21-0 and working away with one other championship.
But its Champions League frustration will sound acquainted: Over the final eight seasons, Paris St.-Germain has by no means failed to succeed in a minimum of the quarterfinals, nevertheless it has solely as soon as superior to the ultimate. That 12 months, 2017, it endured a crushing 24-23 loss to Vardar of Macedonia, a recreation selected the final shot.
Qatar Sports Investments acquired Paris St.-Germain and its soccer group in 2011, and added the handball group — which had beforehand operated as a part of a partnership with the membership — to its totally owned portfolio in 2012. While they had been stable first-division groups for a lot of their histories, neither the soccer group nor the handball group had been a worldbeater. But a flood of cash from the brand new Qatari homeowners aimed to alter that.
Paris St.-Germain has for years signed worldwide soccer stars, together with the 2 costliest transfers in historical past: Neymar for $262 million in 2017 and Kylian Mbappé for $216 million in 2018. The greatest current arrival was Lionel Messi, the Argentine midfielder who was a key a part of the Barcelona group that humiliated P.S.G. in the Champions League in 2017.
The handball group — working with a decrease profile and a smaller funds — turned to the identical playbook by buying two gamers acclaimed as among the many biggest of all time: Mikkel Hansen, the Danish Olympic gold medalist, who has performed with the group since 2012, and Nikola Karabatic, a three-time Olympic gold medalist for France, who was signed in 2015.
When Hansen was re-signed in 2017 for one more 5 years, the P.S.G. government Jean-Claude Blanc informed Handball Planet: “The extension of Mikkel confirms the status of Paris St.-Germain handball on the world stage and our ambition for the coming seasons.” While title after title in France has been good, although, that ambition additionally consists of a European title or two.
Paris St.-Germain’s quest for a Champions League title this season sustained a blow when Hansen, a three-time world participant of the 12 months, contracted phlebitis after which a pulmonary embolism. He is out for the season and plans to return to a Danish membership subsequent season at age 34. Paris St.-Germain begins the playoff spherical in opposition to Elverum of Norway on Wednesday.
Should P.S.G. handball defeat Elverum after which Kiel of Germany, it might advance to a single-elimination last 4 in Cologne, Germany, in June, its sixth journey to that stage in seven years.
By then, loads of opposing followers will once more have accused Paris St.-Germain of paying for European glory. The funds have been made. But the glory stays — for now — simply out of attain.
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