It’s time for a major cleaning in the Parisian locker room: five days after leaking that the Brazilian defender Thiago Silva (35), captain since 2012, would not see his contract extended beyond the current season, the capital club’s sport director Leonardo announced in the JDD that Edinson Canavi (33) would suffer the same fate. “It was a very difficult decision to make [dans les deux cas], commented the Parisian leader. These are the players who have marked the history of the club: we always wonder whether we should continue a long way together or whether it is better to avoid the year too much. The stories were so beautiful. But, yes, we are coming to the end. We had to make a logical decision, including at the economic level or with regard to the coming generation. Maybe we are wrong, I do not know. There is no perfect time. ”
Read also PSG goes from pleasant to useful
Master in the art of mixing that which concerns the objective analyst with more tendentious and subterranean considerations, Leonardo nevertheless says a lot. On the one hand, he admits to cutting the road to a possible umpteenth resurrection of the native of Salto. Often bordered in the capital, sometimes vilified for technical limits that the supporters of the Uruguayan striker dispute (what should be exactly the technical qualities of a center forward?), Cavani has always redone itself, including this season finally taking over in early 2020 on a Mauro Icardi (27 years old) yet scheduled to replace him. The economic dimension advanced by Leonardo also weighs: Thiago Silva plus Cavani is more than 30 million euros in annual wages for a club constrained – at least in principle, or indeed the latest news – by financial fair play.
Proverbial media silence
Thiago Silva and Cavani were two of the pillars of the Paris-SG imagined by Leonardo during his first visit to the capital, between 2011 and 2013: basically, the sports director today undoes what he did yesterday. The club moves on. The heritage dimension mentioned by Leonardo also weighs: Cavani, it’s 200 goals since his arrival in 2013, the club record, and 44 more (with 121 more games as well) than Zlatan Ibrahimovic who, do you need recall, had demanded and obtained the exile of the Uruguayan on the left flank – therefore further from the opposing goal – between 2013 and 2016 for his own statistical and technical comfort. This sacrificial side, which was also found in the defensive abnegation of an attacker focused on the effort and the mysteries of compensation for the loss of the ball to cut the progress of the opposing ball, will have made Cavani the idol Parc des Princes, the player’s proverbial media silence, which also gave him an aura of integrity that spoiled nothing.
Read also Edinson Cavani, lonely warrior
As often, the reality was more mixed, more subtle. After two seasons spent pacing the flanks of the Parisian attack, Cavani had opened up to his leadership from the start of the 2015-2016 season: that’s enough, it’s the axis or you do without me. In the absence of a satisfactory response from the leaders, he had allowed a few torments to leak during an interview in the newspaper the team, facing the next day all smiles the dark eyes of the Parisian president Nasser al-Khelaïfi while arriving at the training – had to listen… The Uruguayan will be finally heard, Ibra will clear the floor at the end of the best statistical season of the Swedish under the Paris jersey (43 pawns, double the previous year) and Cavani inducted as attack leader.
Undermined by injuries
On the collective level, the following season was dantesque: Ascension of Camp Nou (1-6 in Barcelona in 8e of the Champions League, the 4-0 first leg), loss of the title of champion of France at the expense of AS Monaco and Neymar plus Kylian Mbappé who landed in stride, relegating Cavani to the rank of a decor element. What it has, basically, always been, including in 2016-2017: a type that you hear little, not bonding with the Brazilian coterie of the club, maintaining a form of exile in his own locker room. In football, we speak of “effort leader” or “leader by example”, a way of saying that outside the field, it’s good morning. Neymar and Mbappé will devour it on its feet: not a ball for a Uruguayan unable in their eyes to make them play them, the German trainer Thomas Tuchel who takes note and a Cavani undermined by injuries – probable counterparts of his immense generosity in the effort throughout his career – which slides on the sidelines.
Read also Romain Molina: “This need to cut, to escape from the world is necessary for Edinson Cavani”
Thus, Leonardo drew the line. Finally not quite: there remains the balance of the Champions League to be disputed in August and the authorities have opened the possibility of an addendum to contracts ending in June (like those of Cavani and Silva) to allow the workforce to finish the season as they started. “The idea is to end up with themadded Leonardo. But the way to do this is unclear legally. ” Not to mention the state of mind of two players knowing about the start the minute the Paris-SG leaves the competition when they have long hoped for something else.
Grégory Schneider
.
