For a club where big bucks dominate, this free transfer from Stoke City just earned the oil-rich Paris side a route through to the next round of the Champions League.
Anti-Hero
While Neymar may have been the best player on the park as PSG summoned two goals in the last few minutes of the game to beat Atalanta, Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting sealed the deal for his side.
In typical fashion, the hero won’t be a hero for very long as he’ll be leaving the club at the end of his contract.
Free
This is a man who has never cost a penny for a buying side. The most anyone has ever paid for his services was the 45,000 pounds Nuremberg paid Hamburg for a season-long loan back in 2009/2010, according to [Transfermarkt][1]. Apart from that, it’s been free transfers the whole way.
From Hamburg to Mainz to Schalke to Stoke to Paris. Free. He is the pauper amongst princes, leading them to the promised land with nothing at the end of it apart from the boot. Incredibly, his 49 appearances for the French side ranks third most among teams he’s played for, behind the 81 games with Mainz and 106 for Schalke.
He’s the antithesis of what PSG have become.
One Solution
When they have a problem, they simply throw money at it. In 2018/2019, they signed Kylian Mbappe for over one hundred million pounds and still had room to bring in Leandro Paredes and Thilo Kehrer for a combined fee of more than 60 million pounds. Kehrer has played just 34 Ligue 1 games since.
What Neymar earns in a year, Atalanta pay out to their whole squad in wages. This is not the type of team to be in the debt of a free transfer who’d been scrapping around middling clubs of Germany and England.
Good Story
The marketers at the Champions League will love this story. They’ll pretend that the comeback is the stuff of legends, and that surprises can still happen.
But for PSG, the only surprise was the winning goal was scored by a 31-year-old journeyman that was signed on a free and who’s leaving for nothing…. again.[1]: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/eric-maxim-choupo-moting/leistungsdaten/spieler/45660