Jubilation and ringing cash registers as Neymar arrives in Paris

A football club could hardly hope to start its season with more of a bang. Paris Saint-Germain have hit world headlines with the record-breaking 222mn euro transfer payment to release Neymar from his contract with Barcelona. PSG, which came second in last year’s championship, eight points behind winner Monaco, will be hoping for an outright win this year. But it is also setting its hopes higher: on the Champions League, which it has never yet won. Neymar himself touched down in Paris mid-morning yesterday and was whisked to his hotel accompanied by police outriders. Footage released by the club and published on French media showed him practising keepy-uppies on the grass of the Parc des Princes stadium in western Paris, and greeting ecstatic supporters. Club president Nasser al-Khelaifi said he was “very, very happy” to have Neymar in Paris. It was hardly an original sentiment from a club boss presenting a new signing, but al-Khelaifi looked like he meant it. PSG lost no time promoting its new player: already on Thursday night, it published a short video on social media with the strapline “He’s coming” and views of the French capital. Before midnight, it had announced that the new Neymar number 10 jersey would be available from 10am (0800GMT) in the club stores yesterday. Supporters were not slow to answer the call. Television pictures showed throngs gathering outside the PSG shop at Parc des Princes. At midday the queue outside the club’s store on the Champs-Elysees reached back to the nearest corner, while seven large security men guarded the entrance. “It’s a historic moment, it’s something big,” exulted 20-year old Ait from the Paris suburb of Cergy, who had already put on his new yellow Neymar away strip and was clutching a bag containing the blue and red home strip as well as a new football. A man in a red PSG top, at the wheel of a white van, crashed a red light at a pedestrian crossing as he gawped and grinned, filming the crowds outside the shop on his mobile phone. “Never has a player been so eagerly awaited in the capital,” wrote French sports newspaper L’Equipe. Neymar’s signing was “one of the most important events in French football in the last 30 years,” wrote the paper’s veteran commentator Vincent Duluc. Duluc noted that the transfer came at a time when French domestic football has been “marginalised,” falling out of the limelight compared to the other big European leagues of England, Italy, Germany and Spain. “But we have the right to gawp, to be flabbergasted, to rejoice: this transfer comes like a storm that will shift all the lines, making PSG a global brand and bringing Ligue 1 into the light,” he wrote. Whether out of noblesse oblige or genuine pleasure, PSG’s rivals were quick to express appreciation for the new signing too. “His arrival is good news for Ligue 1... and maybe a bit less good when we come face to face with him,” Saint-Eitienne captain Loic Perrin told newspaper Le Parisien. “Neymar at PSG? Even though I’m a goalkeeper and there’s every chance that he’ll give me a hard time, it’s superb news for Ligue 1,” Dijon goalkeeper Baptiste Reynet wrote on Twitter before the announcement.