Paris Football Club struggles to get established in capital city
PARIS:"For me, we're not playing in PSG's shadow -- they're playing on another planet to us."
That's the verdict of little-known Paris Football Club's talented young coach Fabien Mercadel.
"They're a show, it's really a football spectacle. We're playing real football -- football in the mud with youngsters trained by the club looking to climb up."
In a city with a population of over two million people and an urban area of more than 12 million, second division PFC have been averaging around 2,500 supporters per match.
Paris is somewhat unique in that respect amongst western European capital cities in that it doesn't have a significant second team, but PFC president Pierre Ferracci has plans to change that.
"First of all we hope to get established in Ligue 1 and create this second team in Paris that everyone's been hoping for these last 40 years, but that no-one has managed," he told AFP.
Despite only being promoted to Ligue 2 this season, PFC are looking increasingly upwardly mobile.
Following Tuesday's 1-1 draw at Le Havre they currently sit fourth in Ligue 2, just two points off second -- meaning promotion to Ligue 1 and the possibility of facing Paris Saint Germain and stars like Neymar next season is becoming very real.
But so far, Qatar-backed PSG have been the bete noir for Parisian teams looking to rise through the ranks.
"Why is it harder in Paris? Because for the last 40 years PSG have been crushing everyone, and even more so in the last five-to-six years since the Qataris arrived," said Ferracci.
"In Paris, if you're not in Ligue 1, you don't exist. Why? Because of PSG who attract everything. And because Paris is also the capital of all shows. There are many things to do in Paris, and not just in sport."
They may be from a big city but PFC are a small club with the lowest average attendance and one of the smaller total budgets in the league -- around 8.5 million euros ($10.4 million) compared to Lens' 40 million.
Minimum wage
The prospect of lining up alongside PSG next season is staggering.
While PSG can afford to buy Neymar for 222 million euros and pay him a reported three million euros a month, like most Ligue 2 sides, PFC's entire first team squad was acquired for free and some players earn the minimum wage: less than 0.05 percent of the Brazilian superstar's earnings.
Yet incredibly, these two clubs have a common history.
PFC were created in 1969 because there wasn't a single professional club playing in the city.
In order to gain access to the league in 1970 they merged with nearby Stade Saint Germain, playing in the second division, to form a new entity: Paris Saint Germain Football Club.
The marriage lasted only two years before the two split into PSG and PFC.
Since then, their paths could not have been more different as PFC dropped at one point into the regional fifth tier before starting to claw their way back up the league pyramid.
Meanwhile, PSG were winning Ligue 1, reaching the latter stages of the Champions League and dwarfing all other clubs in France.
One of PFC's star players is 23-year-old midfielder Redouane Kerrouche, who made a name for himself earlier this season with a goal even Neymar would have been proud of.
Against runaway league leaders Reims, Kerrouche surged forward from the halfway line, produced a double step-over reminiscent of Cristiano Ronaldo to beat two defenders before rifling a stunning strike into the top corner.
Kante the idol
Like 80 percent of PFC's players, Kerrouche comes from the Paris region. A PSG fan, it is his first season as a professional and his idol is Chelsea's France international midfielder N'Golo Kante.
"N'Golo Kante is a reference for me, he comes from a similar situation to me," Kerrouche told AFP.
"He came from a low level to reach the Premier League -- he's an example for me."
Starting out at third-tier Boulogne, France international Kante went on to win back-to-back Premier League titles with first Leicester and then Chelsea.
The challenge for PFC, though, is to hold onto Paris-born players like Kerrouche and Kante.
"Now we have a professional status for the first team but the club remains amateur, which means we don't have a centre of excellence," explained Mercadel.
"It's very easy for clubs with centres of excellence to come to us and help themselves without having to spend a single euro on the players they take."
Under French league rules, avoiding relegation this season would allow PFC to create a centre of excellence and then offer contracts to the plethora of talented youngsters from the Paris region, many of whom play for PFC's junior sides.
"This Paris region is, as (Arsenal manager) Arsene Wenger told me a few years ago, beside that of Sao Paulo, the best in the world for producing talent," said Ferracci.
Being able to exploit it, Mercadel added, "is the key" to PFC's future.