Paris FC: Backed by billionaires and Red Bull, with Jurgen Klopp ...

Paris has long been an anomaly in European football.

Despite sitting on the continent's most renowned talent pool, the French capital has been unable to sustain more than one top-flight club in decades, let alone produce a lasting local derby in Ligue 1.

While Paris St-Germain have enjoyed a near-uninterrupted stranglehold on French football since a Qatari takeover in 2011, the lower-league clubs that make up the rest of the city's footballing landscape have been often beset with precarious finances, stadium issues, and ill-fated mergers.

Last month's takeover of Paris FC by the Arnault family, who topped Forbes' list of richest billionaires, external in 2024 and own the luxury goods empire LVMH, looks set to buck that trend.

The acquisition, which also involves a minority stake for Red Bull, was all but official by the time Antoine Arnault, the eldest son of Bernard Arnault, attended the high-flying Ligue 2 side's home clash against Grenoble in October.

That day, the second-tier regulars would seal a fifth consecutive victory to firmly establish themselves as promotion frontrunners. A tail-off in form has resulted in them since slipping to second place, but January reinforcements should not be too difficult to come by given their newfound financial backing.

The last credible challenge to PSG's dominance in Paris came in the 1980s, with a short-lived takeover of Racing Club de Paris by businessman Jean-Luc Lagardere, who rebranded the team as Matra Racing. This briefly involved a merger with Paris FC.

Despite signing a host of stars - notably David Ginola and Enzo Francescoli - the project ultimately ended and the club were heading for financial disarray by the end of the decade, with only a run to the Coupe de France final to show for the investment.

While the stated long-term aim is to qualify for European football, Paris FC will look to use the fate of Matra Racing as a cautionary tale.

"We don't want to jump the gun," emphasises club president Pierre Ferracci, speaking to BBC Sport.

Ferracci, who has been involved in the club since 2006, will stay on for another three years after selling the majority of his shares to the Arnault family.

"We want the club's spine to be from the Paris region. Everyone else signs players from Paris, so it would be good for a local club to build on that," the 72-year-old explains. "We would still be open to players from elsewhere, though."

This focus on local talent will help the club market itself as a more grounded alternative to PSG.

The objective, the new management says, is for Paris FC to remain a "popular" club - even if this image may be somewhat at odds with the reality of being taken over by the owners of the world's largest luxury conglomerate.

The club's reputation for producing talent is nevertheless well established, with Ibrahima Konate, Axel Disasi, and Nordi Mukiele among the high-profile France internationals to have come through the ranks at Paris FC.

All too often, though, players of that ilk have been snapped up by other French clubs even before making a first-team appearance.

In this sense, the expertise of Red Bull, who now have an 11% stake, could prove key.

"The men's and women's academies are an aspect of our DNA that the family and Red Bull will want to push even further," says Ferracci.

For the time being, the big names are likelier to be found in the backroom team than on the pitch.

Jurgen Klopp, through his upcoming role as Red Bull's head of football operations, is set to play a key part in the club's development - albeit from a distance, with another notable German figure in Mario Gomez acting as the Austrian firm's man on the ground.

Ferracci, in any case, wants to make the most of Klopp's involvement in the project.

"What he did at Liverpool is the kind of thing we should be inspired by, but not try to copy," he says. "He has the technical vision, the aura, and that unifying effect, and I can't wait for his arrival."

While some have voiced fears of the club being subsumed into the wider Red Bull pyramid of clubs, both Arnault and Ferracci have quashed the prospect of a Red Bull Paris.

"We're not going to be drawn into multi-club ownership. The Arnault family are the majority shareholders in this deal," says Ferracci, who has previously expressed his distrust of a system which is increasingly taking hold in French football.

One defining feature of the club is the strength of its women's side.

Previously known as Juvisy before a merger with Paris FC in 2017, the team are six-time national champions and regularly qualify for European competition, usually finishing behind only Lyon and PSG in the league table.

Matching their neighbours, with whom they already have an established rivalry, is a more immediate objective here.

Fittingly, the women's team's first match after the takeover went through was a home fixture at Stade Charlety against PSG, with a late strike from France international Clara Mateo clinching a point for the hosts.

"The idea is to aim higher, to develop women's football to the same degree as men's. I can't promise that we'll be at Lyon's level straight away, but we'll look to break into the top two and then set new objectives when we get there," Ferracci adds.

Where exactly in the capital the club's ambitions take shape will be another matter entirely. Both the men's and women's first teams play at the multi-purpose Charlety, nestled against the Peripherique ring road in the south-east of Paris.

The open-air stadium is hardly an ideal logistical fit, chiefly due to its athletics track and the little scope for expansion. Sparse attendances were a recurring issue until a free-ticket scheme, introduced midway through last season, saw average attendances grow to over half of the 20,000 capacity.

For Ferracci, a move to the Stade Jean-Bouin, a more compact ground which sits in the literal shadow of the Parc des Princes and currently hosts rugby club Stade Francais, would be the ideal short-term option.

"I hope that, one day, the 20,000 seats won't be enough," Ferracci says. "We could aim for something from 40,000, which we don't have at either of those grounds. If we go up to Ligue 1 in the next few years, we'll make do with one of them, though."

While the prospect of a more contested derby has dominated headlines, the Paris FC decision-makers have sidestepped talk of a confrontational rivalry - with Antoine Arnault himself even professing to be a long-time fan of 12-time league champions PSG.

"I think there's room for two clubs in Paris, for two different stories that could be complementary," explained Arnault, who is CEO of Christian Dior, in a news conference.

Ferracci adds: "There's no hostility, I myself was a season ticket holder [at PSG] with my son back in the day."

The club president also highlights that PSG and Brazil legend Rai and former PSG president Michel Denisot are involved at Paris FC.

Whether that cordial, bridge-building approach survives the potentially bitter reality of a battle for supremacy in Ligue 1 and in Paris remains to be seen.

For now, though, Paris FC have a promotion campaign to get back on track.