Over the past decade or so, the term "culture" has acquired a kind of mythical, yet meaningless, value. When a team or a company succeeds, it couldn't have happened without a strong "organizational culture" or if someone hadn't established a "culture of winning." When there's any kind of spectacular failure, there was "no culture of accountability" -- or, worse yet, there was a culture, but it was a "toxic culture."
Culture matters, obviously. There are bad places to work and there places to work. If you've worked more than one job, you know that no two organizations are the same, and it's also true for sports teams: vibes can be great, vibes can be awful. It's just that culture sometimes -- many times -- comes to serve as a stand-in for all the things we can't control, can't understand or can't measure. And, well, you rarely hear about teams that lose, but also have a great culture, or those that win despite a toxic culture (other than, perhaps, the Houston Astros). So, does winning breed culture? Or vice versa?
Whatever direction the causal arrow points, there is one soccer team that has never won the thing it wants to win and has no culture whatsoever.
Earlier this month, our very own Julien Laurens reported that Kylian Mbappe, mere months after signing one of the most lucrative contracts in soccer history, has decided he wants to leave Paris Saint-Germain in January. Among his frustrations: the club not purchasing a No. 9 for him to play off, the lack of added center-back signings, and the continued presence of Neymar in the squad.
How could it all disintegrate so quickly? At Paris Saint-Germain, the lack of culture and the lack of winning are impossible to pull apart.