“The Parc des Princes is not for sale,” they warn Paris Saint-Germain

The Parc des Princes “is not for sale” and “will not be sold” to Paris SG, which wanted to buy the stadium from Paris, warned the mayor of the French capital Anne Hidalgo in a meeting with readers of the newspaper Le Parisien.

The Qatari owners of PSG threatened a few weeks ago to abandon the historic stadium if the municipality did not sell it to them, a mandatory condition to carry out renovation, modernization and expansion works estimated at 500 million euros.

“It is a firm and definitive position. It is an exceptional heritage of Parisians”, added the socialist mayor, whose team had not been closed to dialogue until now, despite the fact that the sale of the venue was not the “priority option”.

First inaugurated in 1897 and then in 1972 with its new architecture, the old velodrome, whose current capacity is 48,000 spectators, is the stadium where Paris SG has played since 1974.

Club and city signed the current use contract in 2014, for a period of 30 years.

At the end of November, the president of Paris SG Nasser Al-Khelaifi dug up the hatchet: “They are pressuring us to leave,” he declared in an interview referring to the town hall, recalling that the club “has invested 80 million euros” before the Eurocopa-2016 in reforming a venue that “does not belong to us”.

The club made a purchase offer, but “very low, very far from the estimate we have,” said Sports deputy Pierre Rabadan at the time.

According to a source close to the club, the estimate made by the city planning services is “ten times higher than our price” for the stadium.

According to first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire, quoted by Le Parisien, PSG offered 40 million euros. “He is cheaper than Paredes”, he compared the cost of the Argentine midfielder (50 million), which angered Al-Khelaifi. (D)