Pastore on PSG's transformation: « They all left their mark »

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·1 October 2026

Pastore on PSG's transformation: « They all left their mark »

Javier Pastore, 37, a former Paris Saint-Germain attacking midfielder who is now retired, looked back on his years in Paris with Flashscore. The Argentine spoke about a dressing room filled with stars, but above all about an ambition that was clear from the very first years of the project, whose progress he can now fully appreciate.

Pastore: “They all left their mark on the club’s history”

“I had the privilege of playing with extraordinary talents. The arrival of Zlatan Ibrahimovic was very important for us younger players. He brought fighting spirit, intense professionalism and high standards that helped us improve. Then there were Lavezzi, Cavani, Di Maria, Thiago Silva, Neymar, Beckham, Mbappé… You learn from each of them, and they all left their mark on the club’s history.”

Pastore’s memories go beyond a simple parade of big names. His account also tells the story of the gradual building of a very high-level culture. Ibrahimovic in particular stands out as one of the players who helped change the standards in the dressing room at a time when Paris was still trying to establish itself permanently among Europe’s leading clubs.

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Then the generations followed one another, with very different profiles and personalities. Pastore, for his part, had the distinction of living through several of those eras.

Pastore: “The club has grown exponentially”

“From the very beginning, you could see the ambition and the project that the management, the president and the Qatari group wanted to build. When they signed me, and then the following year brought in world-class players like Thiago Silva, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Ezequiel Lavezzi and all those who followed, they laid the foundations for this new Paris Saint-Germain with the goal of reaching the level it is at today. I’m not only talking about the pitch, but also the infrastructure, the training centre and the stadium. The club has grown exponentially over the past 15 years. Today, it is competing at the very top of European and world football, alongside the biggest clubs.

Pastore: “It is the result of many years of building”

Did you think the club was capable of reaching these heights in the Champions League when you were playing there? Yes, absolutely. The scale of the project presented to us from day one, in 2011, was aimed precisely at that: building a world-class training centre, renovating the stadium and recruiting players capable of winning the Champions League. Every year, the right foundations were being laid to compete in semi-finals and finals. In my time, we always fell in the quarter-finals. Sometimes we lacked that little bit of luck, key players were missing for decisive matches, or we simply came up against a better opponent on the night. In recent years, PSG have delivered incredible performances in the Champions League, with great tactical discipline and a lot of solidity in both attack and defence. It is the result of many years of building to achieve the elite status the club enjoys today.

With the benefit of hindsight, Pastore mainly places the early years of the project within a much longer story. The high-profile signings were the most visible part of the transformation at the time, but the ambition already went beyond just assembling the squad.

Fifteen years later, the Argentine’s perspective helps show the scale of PSG’s overall transformation. It is a development he describes with, inevitably, a touch of nostalgia: when he arrived, much of what Paris represents today still remained to be built.

Some view that first phase as a mistake, but the analysis here seems a little fairer. The management could certainly have done some things better. That is part of the learning process when you have such great ambition to transform yourself. But it was beneficial for PSG to target stars in order to step up in level, standards and image. It is also because all that work was done, with regular Champions League appearances, that the more recent years became possible. Nor should we forget that Paris came close to very deep European runs earlier on. And that the recent victories could also have gone the other way on small details.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇫🇷 here.