Paris Saint-Germain

One of the things I acquired during my travels a long time ago was a love of European soccer. I suppose that going to soccer games was part of my general desire at the time to fit in with what real Parisians did. The first game I went to was a Champions' Cup match between the Paris team, Paris Saint-Germain, or PSG (European team names are not plurals, like New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox, but the names of the organizations themselves, like Arsenal Football Club or Futbol Club Barcelona), and either Bayern Munchen or a Hungarian team from a town called, I think, Vac. The cheapest tickets were (and are) the ones in the virages ("bleachers" is probably the best translation) at either end of the field. At the Parc des Princes, PSG's stadium, the two ends are called Auteuil and Boulogne, and when the salesperson asked which one I wanted, I said "Boulogne," not caring. This was actually a bad idea, since Boulogne is known for having the more "ultra" fans, including the skinheads; the Boulogne Boys club was recently banned for displaying a racist banner during a recent match. The virages are anarchic zones semi-policed by the fan clubs themselves; the main role of the police is to protect the rest of the spectators from the people in the virages. Luckily for me, PSG won handily, everyone was happy, and I got home safely.

I went to four matches that year in Paris, and I was hooked. Although you can only see part of the field well from the cheap seats, you can see the game much better than on TV, and the atmosphere is like nothing in the United States, even at a second-tier club like PSG (more on that later), with the flares, the smoke bombs, the riot police, the chanted insults, and the constant singing (mostly to classical tunes, like Radames's aria from Aida, or the bullfighter's aria from Carmen, strangely enough), which can feel like an enormous wall of raw sound.

Although I have not been back to the Parc des Princes since - they always seem to be playing away from home when I am in Paris, and the one time I thought I could see them I had to postpone my trip because of my dog's illness - I've tried to follow PSG from afar. This can be difficult, because most easily-available television coverage here is of the English Premiership and the Champions League (which PSG is almost invariably not part of), but thanks to trips to Paris and Internet video I've been able to watch most of their matches this spring, climaxing in last night's match against Sochaux, which was perhaps their most important match in the last 35 years.

To understand why, you first need to understand the structure of European soccer leagues. Each country has a hierarchy of divisions, from top (elite professionals) to bottom (amateurs): Serie A, B, and C in Italy; Premiership, League Championship, League One, and League Two in England; and so on. For obvious reasons, clubs in higher divisions bring in more money and can afford to buy better players. (The role of money is even more transparent in European soccer than in North American sports, for reasons I won't get into.) And each year, under rules that vary slightly from country to country, the top teams in each division are promoted to the next-higher division, and the bottom teams are relegated to the next-lower division. (The top teams in the top division, get to play in the Europe-wide Champions League the next season, which is the ultimate moneymaker because of its lucrative television contract.)

The other thing you need to understand is that PSG is one of the most embarrassing clubs in the world to support, even leaving aside the occasional right-wing fans. Imagine the New York Yankees - largest city, big budget, widely hated - with a lousy record. In most countries, the big-budget teams win over and over; in England, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool finish in the top four every year, and no other team has finished first since 1995. In France, PSG is supposed to be part of the elite club, and in most years they have the payroll to match - Ronaldinho, who a few years ago was considered the best player in the world, played at PSG before moving to Barcelona - but their record is mediocre at best, without a league championship since 1994 (the year I lived there, I might add). And this year, for the second year in a row, PSG was struggling desperately against relegation, and the financial catastrophe that would mean.

For most of the last two months PSG was 18th out of 20 teams in a league where the bottom three teams are relegated, thanks to a string of late-game defensive breakdowns. Only because the 16th- and 17th-placed teams were equally inept did PSG have any hope at all, and by virtue of a draw at home against St.-Etienne last week, they even climbed into 16th place, one point ahead of Toulouse and Lens; but because of cumulative goal difference, PSG would lose a tiebreaker against either club. So if PSG lost and both other clubs drew, or if PSG drew and both of them won, we were sunk.

The pressure in match like this is much higher than in, say, a cup final, because if relegation can literally kill a team. Without the income of playing in the top division, you can't field a very good team, and with only three teams out of twenty promoted each year, there's no reason to believe you'll ever make it back, especially for a generally dysfunctional club like PSG. So it was a relief when Amaré Diané drilled in shot for PSG in the first half, and Toulouse was tied by Valenciennes, and after 65 minutes Lens fell behind to Bordeaux. But over the next ten minutes everything started to fall apart. First Lens tied Bordeaux, then PSG gave up a goal to Sochaux on a corner kick, and then Toulouse took the lead in their match, and at that point a goal by Lens (against Bordeaux) or by Sochaux (against PSG) would have put my team in the second division, and our defense was looking more and more desperate.

But then, with less than eight minutes left, Diané had the ball in the penalty box, got hit hard by a defender with the goalie rushing out, and somehow bumped the ball with his right foot, between the defender's legs and just past the goalie, the ball rolling slowly, slowly, interminably slowly while the goalie switched directions and raced back toward the goal line, just a split-second too late. It was a pretty pathetic goal, but it counted, and the defense hung on to the end, and finally PSG was still in the top division. So when I do go back to Paris, I can still hope to see my team again.