The stories or cases that have affected Paris Saint-Germain in recent days are very different in nature, but they have one thing in common: they seriously undermine its prestige. The hare lifted by Mediapart this Wednesday takes on a completely different gravity than the Mbappé soap opera, a file linked to “everything to the ego”. According to the investigative mediaPSG paid an external agency to damage the reputation of many players in football, including its own players.
Mediapart relies on the activity report for the 2018-2019 season of this Barcelona-based company, named Digital Big Brother (DBB). DBB has activated a “digital army” on Twitter, mobilizing “many pro-PSG accounts, including 10% of accounts deemed” influential “on social networks, ready to intervene to safeguard the image of PSG”.
The targets: media such as Mediapart Where The Team and some of their journalists, decreed hostile, but also the young woman who accused Neymar of rape (a case finally closed without further action) or the Rennes supporter slapped by the Brazilian after the final of the Coupe de France against the Breton club. The latter will even see his identity revealed on social networks to harm him and try to restore the honor of the very dear star, recruited 222 million euros in 2017 at FC Barcelona.
The Paname Squad account as a figurehead
But the unleashed Twitter accounts, with Paname Squad as a figurehead, also attacked Parisian players who were not loyal enough to the taste of the Parisian institution, such as Adrien Rabiot, insulted like his mother, or even, less filthy, Kylian Mbappe.
In May 2019, “Kyky” thus took a cleat from the Paname Squad account after declaring, on receiving his trophy for best Ligue 1 player awarded by the UNFP, that he wanted to take “more responsibility”, in Paris ” or maybe somewhere else”.
According to Mediapart, the “digital army” created by DBB was supervised by the club’s communications department, whose manager at the time, Jean-Martial Ribes, has since left to work for the luxury group LVMH. PSG told the investigative site that “the club does not[avait] never contracted with an agency in order to harm individuals and institutions”.