Not many clubs in France’s Ligue 1 can turn to Paris Saint-Germain, the current table-toppers, ask haughtily, “show us your medals” and then trump the team from the capital with a bolder array of decorations.
PSG may be soaring, but in a neat trick of the fixture list, the visitors to Paris three days after they celebrated their most significant European result this century, beating Chelsea 3-1, are the original French super club, Stade de Reims.
Reims are these days a relatively modest, provincial institution. Within European football, though, their name will never lose its mystique.
When the European Cup, later redesigned as the Uefa Champions League, was created nearly 60 years ago, the brainchild of a French newspaper editor, Reims became its first darlings. They reached the inaugural final in 1956, losing to Real Madrid; they reached the final again three years later, in spite of Madrid having swooped to sign their best player, Raymond Kopa. Again, Madrid beat them.
In the roller-coaster years since, Reims have plunged into bankruptcy and near-extinction, and climbed back from the brink. When they were promoted to Ligue 1 a little under two seasons ago, it represented quite a renaissance. It had been 33 years since their fall from the top division.
Remarkably, Reims remain, jointly with Marseille, the only French club to have reached more than one European Cup final. Between Reims’s second, in 1959, and Marseille’s first, in 1991, France’s only finalist was Saint-Etienne, who lost to Bayern Munich, in 1976.
In the 21 years since Marseille registered the sole French victory in the competition, only Monaco, in 2004, have made it to a final.
After PSG’s win against Chelsea in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final on Wednesday, expectations have swelled that the pattern of scarcity will change, perhaps as soon as next month. There is also a growing belief that with the wealth now being funnelled into PSG by their Qatari owners, and the financial backing enjoyed by Monaco since they became part of the portfolio of the Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovyev, Ligue 1 generally will become more than just a distinguished also-ran in the European hierarchy.
“I was very proud of my team,” Nasser Al Khelaifi, the PSG president, said on Wednesday night, “and especially about the quality of their play.” French domestic football has in recent years sometimes been derided as defensive and a little dull.
The rest of the top division may take some persuading that PSG’s advances, and the progress of Monaco, has a benefit for the 18 clubs reconciled to that pair’s financial domination. But there should be a trickle-down bonus. France’s Uefa co-efficient will go up if PSG reach the semi-final, or the final, of the Champions League, which in time would mean enhanced access to the competition for Ligue 1’s third-place finisher.
Meantime, Reims could have a small say in deciding if modern PSG can eclipse one record set by the greatest French club side of the late 1950s. In France’s top division, Reims’s total of 26 victories in a league season, 1959/60, has never been overhauled. PSG currently have 23 from their 31 matches so far, with seven fixtures left. Today, PSG are favourites, but are missing Ligue 1’s leading scorer, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who suffered a thigh injury against Chelsea, and are up against one of the division’s more admired goalkeepers, Reims’s veteran Togo international Kossi Agassa.
For low-budget Reims, seventh place, which they currently occupy, represents something of a triumph already, and the possibility of seizing a Europa League spot has probably become too remote, with fourth place (Saint-Etienne) 10 points above. But as they visit the Parc des Princes, one or two of their senior followers will be reminded of the night when Reims took the stage, at the same venue, for the debut of the greatest final in club football, 58 years ago.
These days, the Parc is the home of the French club who anticipate bringing the trophy there sooner rather than later. “We want to win the Champions League within four years,” Al Khelaifi said last summer. Events last week encouraged in him the thought that deadline might have been too generous.
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