★ Moneyball Original · Opinion
Why PSG are not as good as you think, and why that might not matter
By Moneyball Editorial · published
Paris Saint-Germain are the champions of Europe's imagination. They won the Champions League in 2025 by beating Inter 5-0 in Munich, the biggest winning margin in the history of the final, and Ousmane Dembélé won the Ballon d'Or months later. So here is an unpopular sentence: PSG are not as good as their numbers make them look. And here is the twist that makes it interesting: it might not matter.
Numbers made in France
Every statistic has an address. PSG's are made mostly in Ligue 1, a league where they have more money than the next several clubs put together, where many opponents set out not to lose rather than to win, and where a dominant side can rack up possession, shots and expected goals against defences that would struggle in the Premier League's bottom half. None of this is PSG's fault. It is simply where they play. But it means their raw numbers are inflated in a way that comparing them with Arsenal's, Liverpool's or Real Madrid's never captures.
Moneyball Scout deals with this the way a good scout does: it adjusts. Every player season is weighed by league strength, and a season in Ligue 1 is worth 0.90 of the same season in the Premier League. That sounds small. It is not. Spread across a squad, it is the difference between "the best team in Europe" and "one of five or six teams who could win it".
In Ligue 1 this season PSG are 2nd on 14 points from 7 matches, level with Olympique Lyonnais. Their xG margin is +1.28 a match, and their Pi-rating says they beat an average Ligue 1 side by +0.09 goals. On expected points per match they lead, but only by 0.32: closer than the table and the reputation suggest.
| Measure | Paris Saint Germain | Rank of 18 |
|---|---|---|
| League position (points) | 14 pts from 7 | 2nd |
| Expected points (from xG) | 14.2 from 7 | 1st |
| Pi-rating (goal margin vs average) | +0.09 | 2nd |
| Strength after shrinkage (xG margin per match) | +0.60 | 1st |
| Projected final points | 62 | 1st |
How big is the gap in France?
Dominance is relative. A team that wins the league by twenty points in a league of equals is extraordinary; a team that does it with a budget several times larger than anyone else's is merely doing its job. The useful question is not whether PSG win Ligue 1 but how far ahead of the rest they really are, measured on chances rather than on trophies.
On Pi-ratings, which reward big wins with diminishing returns so that a 6-0 against the bottom side does not count six times, PSG are −0.02 goals a match worse than the next best side in France (Olympique Lyonnais). That is close enough for this to be a real title race, which is good news for PSG: hard matches at home are the best preparation for Europe. On strength after shrinkage, the estimate least likely to be fooled by a few big scores, they are 1st of 18.
There is a fair counter-argument. Ligue 1 is not a weak league in the way the jokes suggest: it develops more elite young players than almost any other, and its best sides press and run as hard as anyone. Monaco, Marseille and Lille have all reached the knockout rounds of the Champions League in recent seasons. The league-strength factor of 0.90 already takes that into account. It does not say Ligue 1 is bad. It says it is not quite the Premier League, and over a season that difference adds up.
The fair test is Europe
If Ligue 1 inflates the numbers, the Champions League deflates them back to their true size. There, the opponents are as rich, the defences are as organised, and PSG cannot rely on a quality gap.
| Per match | Ligue 1 | Champions League |
|---|---|---|
| Matches | 7 | 3 |
| Points per match | 2.00 | 3.00 |
| Goals for | 2.00 | 4.67 |
| Goals against | 1.29 | 1.67 |
| xG for | 2.48 | – |
| xG against | 1.20 | – |
| xG margin | +1.28 | – |
The comparison fills in as the European matches are played. A word of caution: 3 European matches is a small sample, and the Champions League is where small samples lie the most.
What changed when the superstars left
For a decade PSG were the most expensive experiment in football: Neymar for €222 million in 2017, Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi in 2021. The Champions League never came. It came in 2025, the season after Mbappé left for Real Madrid, under Luis Enrique, with a team built around pressing, running and a collective that did not need one man to decide everything. Dembélé, once the most frustrating talent in Europe, became the best player in the world in that system: a forward who presses first and shoots second.
That is the part of the PSG story the numbers love. A team of superstars produces spikes: a moment of genius here, a walk-off there. A team built on a system produces a smoother line. Its xG against falls because everyone defends; its xG for rises because the ball is won higher up. In Ligue 1 this season: Pressure Index 79.5 (1st of 18), possession 68.0% (1st of 18), pass accuracy 90.0% (1st of 18), expected goals against 1.21 a match (3rd of 18).
| Player | Minutes | Rating | Goals | Assists | xG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Désiré Doué | 500 | 7.70 | 3 | 3 | 2.53 |
| Vitinha | 766 | 7.69 | 3 | 1 | 1.02 |
| Fabián Ruiz | 590 | 7.47 | 2 | 3 | 1.61 |
| Ousmane Dembélé | 399 | 7.40 | 4 | 5 | 3.89 |
| Nuno Mendes | 368 | 7.35 | 0 | 2 | 0.41 |
| Ferran Torres | 588 | 7.19 | 7 | 1 | 4.20 |
Is the finishing real?
PSG have scored 14 league goals from chances worth 17.4 expected goals (−3.4), and conceded 9 from 8.4 (+0.6). They are scoring fewer than their chances deserve. That is the good kind of underperformance: the chances are the hard part, and the goals usually follow. Points and performances agree.
A history of looking better than they were
The suspicion that PSG's numbers lie is not new, and it was earned. In March 2017 they beat Barcelona 4-0 in Paris and lost the return 6-1. In 2019 they won 2-0 at Old Trafford and went out 3-1 at home to a Manchester United side missing half its starting eleven. In 2022 they led Real Madrid with half an hour to go at the Bernabéu and lost to a Karim Benzema hat-trick in seventeen minutes. In 2020 they reached the final and lost 1-0 to Bayern. Each time the French numbers had said they were among the best teams in Europe. Each time the knockout said something else.
Those collapses were blamed on mentality, on the stars, on the owners. A Moneyball reading is colder: the numbers that made PSG look like favourites were mostly made against opponents who could not punish them, so they overstated how a team that had rarely been under pressure would cope with it. A team that wins every week by three goals learns very little about defending a one-goal lead away from home.
Luis Enrique's great achievement was to change that. His team was built for the hard nights first: a press that defends from the front, full-backs who attack and recover, a midfield that keeps the ball under pressure. The 2025 run, through Liverpool, Aston Villa, Arsenal and finally Inter, was made of exactly the matches the old PSG lost.
Three numbers to watch this season
- The xG margin against the top half. Against Ligue 1's bottom half almost any rich side looks great. The margin against the other good teams is the one that travels to Europe.
- Expected goals against in Europe. PSG's best version concedes few chances. If that number climbs above one expected goal a match against good sides, the spring will be hard.
- Points minus expected points. A side far ahead of its chances in October is usually caught by them by March. A side behind them usually rises.
So why might it not matter?
Because the Champions League is not won by the best team over a season. It is won by the team that survives a few knockout ties, and knockouts are where the gap between "good" and "best" matters least. Two legs against a strong opponent, decided by one or two goals, are close to a coin toss weighted by quality. A team that is genuinely top six in Europe, organised enough to stay in every tie and with forwards who can win one moment, has a real chance every spring. That was PSG in 2025.
So both things are true. PSG's numbers flatter them, because of where most of them are made. And PSG are good enough, in the one competition that defines them, for that not to matter very much.
The Moneyball view
Adjust for the league, then look at the chances in Europe: that is how to read PSG. Our projection puts them on about 62 points in Ligue 1 (1st), which is almost certainly another title. The Champions League will tell us the rest. Do not judge them by the scorelines in France, and do not judge them by one night in Europe either. Judge the xG margin against good teams. Right now that is the only number that answers the question.
- League-strength adjustment: Moneyball Scout weighs a season in Ligue 1 at 0.90 of the same season in the Premier League (Serie A 0.95, La Liga 0.96, Bundesliga 0.94).
- Expected goals (xG): the quality of every chance, so a team is judged on what it created and allowed, not only on what went in.
- Expected points: each match's xG run through a Dixon-Coles score matrix (the Poisson model with the low-score correction the Match Board uses) to give the points a performance usually earns.
- Pi-ratings: a rating for every club at home and away, moved after each result by how far the goal margin beat or missed what the ratings expected.
- Bayesian shrinkage: a club's xG margin is pulled toward the league average as if it had 8 average matches more, so a hot month is not mistaken for a new level.
- Projection: the shrunk strength played out against an average opponent for every match left, added to the points already won.
- Finishing and goalkeeping regression: goals against xG at both ends. A big gap either way rarely lasts a season.
- League ranks on Sportmonks' team figures: possession, passing, pressure, chances, duels.
- Player ratings per 90, from the same Sportmonks data that runs Moneyball Scout.
This is an opinion column by Moneyball Editorial. The figures update themselves after every round, and the sentences around them change with the figures.
Questions
- Are PSG overrated?
- Their raw numbers are, because they are made against Ligue 1 defences. Moneyball Scout weighs a Ligue 1 season at 0.90 of a Premier League one. Their Champions League figures are the fairer test, and this column puts the two side by side.
- Why adjust for league strength?
- Because a goal against the 15th-best side in Ligue 1 is not the same achievement as a goal against the 15th-best side in the Premier League. Without the adjustment, every dominant team in a weaker league looks like the best team in the world.
- What are Pi-ratings?
- A rating for every club at home and away, moved after each result by how far the goal margin beat or missed what the ratings expected. Big wins count, but with diminishing returns.
- Where do the numbers come from?
- Sportmonks match data for Ligue 1 and the Champions League, read by the Moneyball engine and updated every time the site updates.