Wenger: Neymar deal is ‘beyond calculation and beyond rationality’

Joe Williams

Arsène Wenger has described Neymar’s £198million move to PSG from Barcelona as “beyond calculation and beyond rationality”.

Wenger went on to describe how he felt the deal was a consequence of when “a country owns a club”.

Qatar Sports Investments became PSG’s majority shareholder in 2011, and have backed the club heavily in the transfer market since.

However, despite any previous transfers paid for by the club, the Neymar deal completely blows them out of the water.

“For me, it is the consequence of the ownership’s and that has completely changed the whole landscape of football in the last 15 years,” Wenger said.

“Once a country owns a club, everything is possible. It becomes very difficult to respect the financial fair play because you can have different ways or different interests for a country to have such a big player to represent a country. It can’t justify the investments and looks unusual for the game.

“Apart from that, we are not in a period any more where you think, in some places: ‘If I invest that, I will get that back.’ We are beyond that. The number today involves a lot of passion, pride, public interest and you cannot rationalise that anymore.

“It also looks like the inflation is accelerating. We crossed the 100m line last year and, only one year later, we’re crossing the £200m line.

“When you think that Trevor Francis was the first £1m player [when he joined Nottingham Forest from Birmingham City in 1979] and that looked unreasonable, it shows you how much distance and how far we have come, how big football has become.

“It’s beyond calculation and beyond rationality.”

Neymar will reportedly early around €30m after tax, which, when converted to Sterling, works out at around £520,000 a week.