Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
To the judge, the math at Paris St.-Germain simply did not add up.
In one free-spending summer in 2017, P.S.G. made the two most expensive acquisitions in soccer history, paying more than $400 million to add the star forwards Neymar and Kylian Mbappé to the French champions’ star-studded roster.
To outsiders, the signings — without offsetting sales of similar value or a huge infusion of sponsorship revenue — simply could not square with European soccer’s so-called financial fair-play system. Those rules, created to reduce clubs’ indebtedness and level the playing field in an era in which teams were being infused with cash by billionaires and nation-states, require clubs to balance their spending with revenue.