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PSG’s sporting director Leonardo quits the club

PSG's sporting director Leonardo is stepping down, the club announced on Wednesday. The Brazilian, who was recently banned for a year for barging a referee, will quit at the end of the summer transfer window.

Published: 10 July 2013 12:47 CEST

PSG's sporting director Leonardo quits the club

Leonardo right is led awqy after barging a referee. Photo: Screen grab Canal plus.

Just weeks after losing coach Carlo Ancelotti to Real Madrid, French league champions PSG were hit by another blow on Wednesday when their Brazilian director of football Leonardo announced his intention to step down.

In a statement the club said: "Leonardo today informed Paris Saint-Germain of his desire to resign from his position as Sporting Director at the end of the current transfer window.

"We regret his choice but respect his decision.

"We thanks him greatly for his important contribution towards the project of building a top European club in Paris and wish him all the best for his future career."

The Brazilian was recently handed a one-year ban for barging a referee although it is unclear whether this had anything to do with his decision to step down.

The Brazilian was originally banned for nine months, but after he appealed against the decision, French football authorities increased the sanction to 13 months.

The former AC Milan and Inter Milan coach was named as sporting director at the Paris club in July 2011 after they were taken over by wealthy investors from the Gulf state of Qatar.

He attracted top names such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva and David Beckham to the Parc des Princes, but after Carlo Ancelotti stood down as manager to join Real Madrid, he was unable to attract a big-name coach to replace him.

Eventually PSG settled for former France national team coach Laurent Blanc to be in charge for the 2013/14 season.

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Louvre partners US streetwear guru on €572 Leonardo hoodies

The hoodies are printed with a small copy of a Leonardo da Vinci painting. Photo: Off White

The T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies adorned with some of Leonardo's greatest works are a part of an official hook up with the Louvre museum in Paris, which is staging a blockbuster show to mark the 500th anniversary of the Italian master's death.

The hoodies selling for up to 572 euros a piece ($640) mix Leonardo male nudes and paintings like “Saint Anne” with the four-arrowed logo of Abloh's ultra-hip Off-White label.

The world's most visited museum has been a magnet for black American megastars of late, with music's most famous couple, singers Beyonce and Jay-Z, shooting a video there last year for their album, “Apeshit”.

Fans of the streetwear guru Abloh queued through the night last month to snap up a range of homewear he designed for a collaboration with budget furniture chain Ikea.

It included a backlit reproduction of Leonardo's “Mona Lisa” (159 euros) from the Louvre and a green synthetic turf rug bearing the legend, “Wet grass”. Another rug was modelled on an Ikea till receipt.

Abloh, 39, who took the reins of Louis Vuitton's menswear line last year, is one of the hottest fashion designers in the world, with some 15 million followers on social media.

Beyonce and Jay-Z

“I wanted to create a fertile collision between fashion and high art, Abloh said of his Leonardo-inspired streetwear.

The Louvre for its part said that it “rejoiced that such a multi-faceted artist as Virgil Abloh” had been inspired by its collections.

Like the Beyonce and Jay-Z video, which featured them standing regally in front of the “Mona Lisa” while a squad of scantily-clad dancers gyrated in front of Jacques-Louis David's “The Coronation of Napoleon”, it argues that

the exposure brings its treasures to a whole new public.

Rapper will.i.am, one of the founders of the Black Eyed Peas, shot an acclaimed video for his hit “Mona Lisa Smile” there in 2016, where he transposed himself into some of its greatest paintings.

He later made a documentary about the museum for Oprah Winfrey's television channel, OWN.

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Abloh, a former creative director for rapper Kanye West also designs for Nike, and a retrospective of his work broke records at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art before it transferred last month to Atlanta's High Museum of Art.

But the designer was forced to curb his manic globe-trotting schedule in September because of “health considerations”, which meant him missing his own Off-White women's show in the French capital.

He told Vogue at the time that his doctor had warned him that “'this pace that you've pushed your body to is not good for your health'.”

The Louvre's huge Leonardo show runs until February 24.

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