By DAVIDSON ABRAHAM, Middle East
According to a report from Foot en Espagne (h/t SPORT), Paris Saint-Germain are planning to purchase La Liga club RCD Espanyol so that they can harm Barcelona and build a team that can ‘overshadow’ the Blaugrana.
The relationship between Barcelona and PSG has been strained for some years now, following the latter’s acquisition of Neymar in 2017. Lionel Messi’s free transfer from Camp Nou to Parc des Princes last year did little to improve things.
More recently, PSG president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, has been taking constant digs at Barcelona and their finances, most recently questioning whether the Catalan giants’ operations in the summer were even legal. Now, the aforementioned report is claiming that the owners of the Ligue 1 champions are planning further courses of action to harm Barcelona and dislodge them as the best club in Catalonia.
PSG owner Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, now wants to buy Barça’s local rivals RCD Espanyol so that he can build a team that ‘overshadows’ the Blaugrana. Espanyol are currently under the ownership of Chinese toy company Raster Group since 2016, but the club is poorly run and PSG want to capitalize on their situation by purchasing the La Liga outfit and investing money into rebuilding the team as the best in Catalonia.
To that end, Al-Khelaifi has already been instructed to open negotiations with Espanyol to look into the possibility of a takeover. There had already been speculations about PSG wanting to buy Espanyol in June earlier this year. In addition, the aforementioned report now adds that a possible purchase could happen in the coming months as both parties have shown an inclination towards starting talks.
