Pressure is on Paris Saint-Germain to perform this season

Football is a global industry, as its observers, its economists, and its consultants forever emphasise, so it is a little curious how remote the seismic events in the capital of France seem to many outside the borders of that country. Perhaps it is just that the beanstalk financial rise of Paris Saint-Germain, from seeds planted in faraway Qatar, still has a surreal quality. Partly, the Olympic Games in London distracted the public through late July and most of August, so that the concentrated heavy spending in Paris grabbed less attention. Partly, it was also because, for its all football's globalised character, the cadre of clubs - Spanish, English, Italian and German - who make up the traditional elite in club football like to portray themselves as cool and unruffled when an upstart threatens to crash their party. Or at least they do until they want to do business with that wealthy arriviste. So for those whose eyes were only on the Stratford track or Aquatics Centre, here's a recap of what PSG, the leading club from the French capital, but only eighth in the list of all-time winners of the French national championship, had been up to ahead of what would be a disappointing 2-2 draw as they opened their Ligue 1 campaign against Lorient last weekend. Disappointing, because if you spend close to €150 million (Dh681m) on five new players in a league where the previous, defending champions - provincial Montpellier - had just achieved their pre-eminence on an annual budget of barely €30m, you anticipate making a splash fairly quickly. So far the ripples of PSG's big project have been felt in the marketplace more than in the grand stadiums of the game. But the redesign of the club is still less than two years old, the majority shareholding having been bought by a Qatari sovereign fund in the late spring of 2011. The investors' initial target, a place in the Champions League, was met in the first full season, as PSG - who had smashed French records for collective spending last summer as well as this one and in 2011 set a new high for an individual transfer into French football with the purchase, for €42m of Javier Pastore from Palermo - finished second to Mighty-Mouse Montpellier. The quest for a first championnat since 1994 has now become urgent given the resources at head coach Carlo Ancelotti's disposal. Ancelotti is a wise, experienced football man. He knows that even if his sport has become globalised, it is still a team sport with organic cycles and timetables, which means the lavish cherry-picking of individual talent and offers of unmatchable individual rewards are not a guaranteed fast-track to success. He played and coached AC Milan when they, building on a far more distinguished tradition than PSG's, were sometimes guilty of extravagant follies in the transfer market in search of glamour. He worked at Chelsea , too, where impatience for status at European football's high table has frequently been damaging. Ancelotti has turned down opportunities to work at Real Madrid in the past, sensing that he might not be consulted there on the policy of recruitment or the logic of individual signings. There is something of the Real Madrid of a decade ago about the way PSG are gazumping in the transfer market now. Ten years ago, Madrid were adding Brazil's Ronaldo to a fleet of superstars, the so-called 'Galacticos' that included the then two most expensive players on earth, Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane and were planning as their next star, one David Beckham. That project had a mixed yield in terms of trophies. When PSG's Qatari barons were devoting money and time to try to persuade Beckham, the older and slower version of the Galactico edition, to join PSG last January, it looked as if they, like the Madrid of the Noughties, wanted an glamorous endorsement of their legitimacy as football heavyweights as much as they wanted somebody to supply crosses that might win Ligue 1. The PSG-Beckham deal never happened. But profile is evidently important to the small but rich state of Qatar, and its willingness to harness the media power of the world's most popular sport to raise that profile has been a theme of the last two years: the successful Qatari bid to host the 2022 World Cup; the first commercial sponsorship, worth more than €30m a year, across the Barcelona club jersey - which says 'Qatar Foundation' - and the increasing impact in the international live broadcasting rights market of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV company. Then there was the curious 2010 takeover of the Spanish first division club Malaga by a member of the Qatari ruling family, one adventure that has not gone smoothly, apart from the fact Malaga have hauled their way towards qualifying for the Champions League. Some players complained about going months unpaid last season. No such complaints in Paris. Instead the gripe in the rest of France is that the wages being paid by PSG are spoiling individual footballers and upsetting what had been the balance of the league. The new head of state, the socialist Francois Hollande, now hears his finance ministry half-welcoming the extravagant salary being earned by say, Zlatan Ibrahimovic , the stellar recruit of this summer: His reported net annual salary of €14m will at least bring in substantial tax income for a troubled treasury in a country battling against recession. Ibrahimovic is typical of the players targeted by PSG in he has impressed in Italy's Serie A, most recently with AC Milan. Milan are still counting out over €60m from the Qatar Investment Authority, who acquired 70 per cent of PSG's capital in 2011. Thiago Silva, the Brazil defender, has also left San Siro for the Parc des Princes. Ezequiel Lavezzi has moved there from Napoli for €21m; Pastore quit Sicily for Paris. Most Italian clubs simply cannot compete at those sorts of levels. Indeed there is a brief list of institutions anywhere who could. "I now see Real Madrid and PSG as equal powers economically," Madrid's head coach, Jose Mourinho, said. English football's most conspicuous spenders of the summer market so far, Chelsea, look at PSG and see them following a line begun, nine years ago, when a Russian billionaire, Roman Abramovich, identified a football club as a useful vehicle for his ambitions and wealth. "First it was Chelsea who spent a lot of money quickly, then Manchester City and now PSG are doing it," believes Roberto Di Matteo, the Chelsea manager. He could say that with a degree of comfort, unthreatened as yet on the field by bumptious PSG. Chelsea are the holders of the Champions League for the first time in their history. Sudden, overseas investment may have redefined their fortunes quickly in England, but it took Chelsea almost a decade of major spending to fully conquer Europe. City, bankrolled from Abu Dhabi, go into the new Premier League season as the domestic kings in England but have learnt that seizing the bigger, European prize is tougher. Ancelotti expects, for all the savvy of his new recruits, PSG to find obstacles bigger than Montpellier in the way of their ambitions to conquer the continent. How patient his bosses are when he suffers setbacks abroad will be one of the intriguing stories of the season ahead. Follow us

Pressure is on Paris Saint-Germain to perform this season

Anything less than silverware this season will be seen as a disappointment for PSG after a summer of heavy spending.