[SportBoy333]

Heres a story I found thats from last month. Granted its not the same situation as whats going on at PSG but it shows that pro sports in Paris are really struggling right now. There are some parrarells with soccer.

http://www.lnb.fr/index.php?pid=50&i...cursor_start=0

ProA - Basketball, Paris, and the impossible wedding
AFP - 04.09.2008, 16h41

PARIS, 9 apr 2008 (AFP) - The sinking of the Paris-Levallois, under relegation threat, emphasizes the difficult implantation of professional basketball in the capital, where all seems to be present in order to succeed, but where, for the past ten years, basketball goes from deception to disillusion.

At the Euroleague headquarters, in barcelona, some are desperate about it. Damned France, which send them, year after year, teams from towns like Le Mans and Roanne whereas they would love to promote their competition trough the capitals and the metropolis.

But Paris is always awaited, unable to follow the French champion title of the PBR in 1997. During the last 10 years, the club changed its name several times, saw half a dozen of different owners, ten or so managers, wagons of players, TP as shareholder, hope after each change., but finally always the same constatation: At best honorable results, a rare public, no identity.

This year is worse. for the first time since it reached the elite in 1986, the capital's club, next to last before receiving Orleans on Friday, may go back to second division.

Context

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At the begining of the season, optimism was the norm. The fusion between PBR and Levallois gave the birth to the second budget in France (around 5 million euros), and the managing team led by Antoine Rigaudeau and Essar Gabriel looked good.

But at the end, failure once again. And the eternal debate too. Why can't it work in paris? René Le Goff, former club president and nowadays president of the league, first complain against the lack of a good arena.

"We can't develop sportively and economicallyin Coubertin. We would need a 7-8000 places arena, especially in the Parisian context in which it's hard to develop loyalty of the public". Jacques Monclar, coach from 2002 to 2004, also points on "that place in which we could build something".

Another way, that famous "parisian context". "It's tough in Paris, says Jacques Monclar, when we say that so or so football player is not made for le PSG or l'OM, it's the same with basketball and Paris". The difference is that the main thing to handle is the systematic anonymity. "In the country, the players have the pression from the street, emphasizes Le Goff. In Paris, whether you're good or bad..."

Excuses

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"All that can't be taken as excuses", sweeps Laurent Sciarra, who played three times in Paris, and now in Dijon. When you have a jewel like Coubertin and you only fill it three times in ten years, you just shut up! It's the same thing for the players: who recruit them?"

"There are no competent people at the right place, that's all, goes on th former international who first charges the successive managing teams. You have to have a captain in the boat. And, in Paris, the guys are just there for personnal interests and show-business."

Essar Gabriel and Antoine Rigaudeau, who don't live in Paris, were criticised this season for their repeated absences. "It doesn't help, especially when you're in a building phase. ", notes René Le Goff.

According to Charles Bietry, head of the club in 1997, it is possible to succeed in Basketball in Paris, "because it happened to us in 1997". The mix to take off again "goes through results and the gathering of people around a club that nowadays lives in disregard."

But creat such an interest won't an easy task, especially in the current context, eaten away by the poor NT results and the vanishing of the clubs on the European scene. "Paris, estimate Bietry, is the symbol of French basketball poor health."

AFP.