Nasser al-Khelaïfi has been in conflict with almost everyone except Gianni Infantino. He recently criticised Kylian Mbappe, who is leaving the club, and for a long time he has been fighting with the Paris City Council, which does not want to hand over the Parc des Princes to the Qatari owners. Will a new arena be built on the site of the racetrack?

Split between city and club. What's next?

PSG's current stadium, Parc des Princes, has space restrictions that make further expansion impossible. As a result of this, and the unsuccessful talks with the city council, the club's management started to look for a new location that would meet the requirements in terms of both capacity and infrastructure. In February, the club's president publicly ended negotiations with the Paris City Council over the takeover of the Parc des Princes due to Mayor Anne Hidalgo's aversion to handing over the historic facility to the club's Qatari owners. It's too easy to say now that the stadium is no longer for sale. We know what we want, we have wasted years. It's over, we want to move out of the Parc said al-Khelaïfi.

The complete split between the club and the city over the sale of the Parc des Princes is forcing Parisian officials to look for new locations for PSG's future venue. So far, four options have been mentioned in the media:

• Montigny-le-Bretonneux - 30,000-people town west of Versailles;
• Gonesse - a city on the northern outskirts of Paris;
• Aulnay-sous-Bois - a French municipality known for its Citroën factory;
• the Saint-Cloud racetrack.

Unofficially, the choice fell on Saint-Cloud, home to a historic and atypical French hippodrome. However, despite the phenomenal conditions, it could be a problematic choice.

© Chabe01 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Advantages and facilities

The location has a number of advantages. Firstly, the track is not owned by the Paris City Council but by France Galop, which may foreshadow easier negotiations for the takeover of the facility and the land, as the PSG management hopes. The surrounding area is spacious enough to accommodate both racing and sports facilities.

Moreover, the distance between the Parc des Princes and the hippodrome is less than 5 km. This means that it is not too far from the centre of Paris and is very well-connected. One advantage in the eyes of the management is that the location offers a view of Paris and the Eiffel Tower.

© Zakarie Faibis (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Disadvantages and limitations

The Saint-Cloud racetrack has a number of obstacles that cannot be quickly avoided. The mayor of Saint-Cloud, Éric Berdoati, is not in favour of the move, even though he himself has been a PSG supporter for more than 40 years. Since the local development plan was passed in 2012, the racecourse has been in an undeveloped zone he says, adding that this is unlikely to change. At the moment, there is no chance of the municipality applying for planning permission for the future PSG stadium.

Asked by Le Parisien, a representative of France Galop replied simply The Saint-Cloud racecourse will remain a racecourse. What's more, the city is not equipped to receive a massive arrival of fans during matches. A number of restrictions therefore seem to spell the end of the Saint-Cloud racetrack. So what will happen in Paris, no one knows. It will be interesting to see if the petrodollars win this time too.

© Chabe01 (CC BY-SA 4.0)