Former French forward Jerome Rothen believes that now-former Paris Saint-Germain sporting director Leonardo is deserving of blame for the current mess that the Ligue 1 powerhouse is in.
PSG and Leonardo parted ways last May. The club later brought in former Lille OSC sporting director Luis Campos to replace Leonardo, as the Portuguese football executive was named PSG’s new football advisor.
In his first summer transfer window at PSG, Campos aspired to revamp the roster from top to bottom, but he had quite a difficult time doing so. For one, several clubs showed an interest in players such as Mauro Icardi and Julian Draxler, but no side was willing to pay their full wages. Thus, Campos sided for loan moves in order to clear some space on the roster.
Rothen believes that Leonardo deserves some blame for Campos’ inability to find buyers for such players because he was the one who signed them to hefty contract deals.
“Many players were loaned out last summer,” Rothen said on RMC Sport’s “Rothen s’enflamme” program.
“The problem is that they were so placed in comfort by the former sporting director, giving huge salaries, that you could not sell them. So Campos loaned them out. … These loaned players like Kurzawa, Icardi, Draxler, they are paid in part by PSG and the worst thing is that they will return. The clubs have put options to buy, but there are already some who want to send the players back.”
Due to the lack of sales in the last two transfer windows, PSG was unable to go all out and bring in a multitude of reinforcements to the team. It will be noteworthy to see its plans for the upcoming summer transfer window.
