Where do Paris Saint-Germain’s signings of Kylian Mbappé and Neymar put them in this summer’s scale of transfer spending?

The signings by English Premier League clubs with the bounty from their 2016-19 £8.4bn TV deals are enormous by historic standards, but even their extravagance is being vastly exceeded by PSG. Manchester City’s £50m to sign Kyle Walker can be seen as a measure of inflated Premier League values, while Manchester United’s initial £75m for Romelu Lukaku remains currently the most paid for a player from a Premier League club. That was exceeded by £123m in the staggering £198m PSG paid to sign Neymar, and now by almost £100m with the £167m pledged for Mbappé, 18, who sat on the bench against Marseille on Sunday and has started only 20 league games.

Why are PSG spending so spectacularly?

On the surface, to acquire a front two who could excel in the Champions League. Underneath, the very fact that the world’s sporting media is consumed by this question is widely thought to be part of the answer. These are statement signings, the actions of a seriously attention-seeking sports business. PSG are owned by the Qatar sovereign wealth fund QSI, and some see PSG’s exhibitionist shopping as an act of profile-raising defiance to the diplomatic crisis the country is facing. Its neighbours, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have closed their borders and blockaded the country, arguing that it has funded terrorist groups, which Qatar has denied.

Whatever happened to ‘financial fair play?’

These signings are a clear challenge to the “FFP” regime introduced by Uefa in 2011 to restrain excessive spending on transfers and wages, and encourage clubs to be financially responsible. The current regulations limit clubs competing in Europe’s elite competitions to total losses of €5m for the 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 financial-reporting periods, or €30m if an owner is entirely covering the extra €25m. Reports that the rules have been relaxed have been mostly exaggerated; there has been some allowance for expenditure immediately after a takeover, but the rules governing the clubs are now stricter than initially, when a €45m loss over the first two seasons was allowed. Uefa’s collation of top flight clubs’ accounts across Europe show a transformation in football’s handling of its TV bonanzas since, registering an overall operating profit of €1.5bn in the last two years, compared to total losses of €700m in the two years prior to the introduction of FFP. PSG have sold players too, including Blaise Matuidi for £18m to Juventus and Jean-Kevin Augustin to RB Leipzig for £11m, but Neymar and Mbappé look like up-yours signings, and it is difficult to see how PSG’s income and expenditure are going to balance, and pass Uefa scrutiny.

What is PSG’s record on complying with the financial fair play restrictions?

The Qatar state fund bought PSG in 2011, following the Fifa vote for the country to host the 2022 World Cup, which was crucially supported by Michel Platini, then the Uefa president, after being encouraged to do so by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. QSI had limited time for the massive spending it considered desirable to fuel the club into Champions League contention, and it has form for breaching FFP regulations.

In May 2014 the club had to accept a €60m fine, reduction of their Champions League squad from 25 players to 21, and other sanctions, after a Uefa investigation. PSG were considered to have artificially inflated their income to balance the books by signing a sponsorship deal with another state-owned enterprise, the Qatar Tourism Authority, reportedly for €200m a year. Uefa rules do not allow owners to evade the rules by investing money using other routes, so sponsorships have to be for fair market value. Uefa said it had only accepted the Qatar Tourism Authority deal at a figure “significantly below that submitted by the club”.

Will PSG’s structuring of the Mbappé purchase help them comply with the rules?

Reports of the outsized deal are that Mbappé will in effect be taken on loan this summer, and the £167m will only become payable next summer, in a different financial year from the acquisition of Neymar. Some reports also suggested that PSG were looking for a clever way round declaring the £198m for Neymar as a player signing. Uefa anticipated from the introduction of the rules that clubs could try smart accounting to evade the simple encouragement to live within European football’s very considerable means in its greatest ever boom time. The regulations are set up not to allow creative accounting, as seen by the refusal to accept PSG’s sponsorship from the QTA. With these signings, the Qatar-owned club are mounting a very public challenge to the financial rules of European football’s governing body, and Uefa will face a test of its credibility when this accounting period is assessed next year.