PSG shift focus to homegrown talent with campus project

PARIS :When academy forward Senny Mayulu scored the final goal in Paris St Germain’s Champions League final victory over Inter Milan, it felt like more than completing the rout of the Italian side.

For the French club, it symbolised a strategic turn. After more than a decade of headline-grabbing signings, PSG are banking on their new 350 million ($403 million) training campus to build future squads largely from within.

The facility on the outskirts of Paris brings together PSG’s men’s, women’s and youth teams under one structure, a move designed to reflect the club’s shift toward developing homegrown talent.

"There’s only one flight of stairs to climb," sports director Luis Campos told reporters. "In the long term, it will be possible to build a squad without spending fortunes on the market and have a team with a French identity."

That identity is already visible. This season, five academy players — Warren Zaire-Emery, Senny Mayulu, Noham Kamara, Ibrahim Mbaye and Quentin Ndjantou — have been integrated into the first team. 

PSG also fielded the youngest starting XI in their history against Montpellier in May, with an average age of 21 years and 251 days, and the team who lifted the Champions League were the second-youngest to win the competition, averaging 24 years and 110 days - just older than the 1994-95 Ajax Amsterdam team.

Two of the club’s brightest prospects have broken records - Zaire-Emery started a match at 16 years, four months and 29 days and Mbaye played aged only two months older.

The policy marks a departure from the approach taken after Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) acquired the club in 2011, when PSG became one of Europe’s biggest spenders.

The French champions signed global stars such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic,