Sunday’s Champions League final will be the first between Europe’s “Old Money” and “New Money”.
The cabal of clubs such as Bayern Munich, Juventus, the Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid, such as Manchester United and Liverpool, among others, have fought bitterly to keep clubs such as Paris Saint-German (PSG), Chelsea, and Manchester City out. their private dining rooms. PSG are the first of the new ultra-rich clubs funded by the Middle East (Qatar) to reach the Champions League final, and have desperately wanted this trophy to take their place at the top of the table. Europe would cement.
The funny thing is that the money from PSG and Munich, at least in part, comes from the same place.
PSG are probably the biggest example of ‘sports laundering’, the practice of ownership / sponsorship of Middle Eastern European sports entities in an attempt to advertise their countries as tourist destinations, while also trying to distract from their horrific practices for human rights. PSG are owned by the Qatari government, and it has long been documented what kind special hell they have spent their migrant workers just to build their World Cup stadiums for 2022. Their record of human rights in general is no less frightening. If you appear on the website of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, you can be pretty safe in the knowledge that your country is being run by demons.
PSG have spent money from Qatari gobies to establish themselves as European powers, including breaking the transfer record to bring Neymar to Paris from Barcelona. Just their likely start three for on Sunday – Neymar, Kylian Mbappe, and Angel Di Maria – are valued at some $ 355M through Transfermarket.com. They cost the club $ 521M to buy. But you are not meant to think about how Qatar came across that money as a question as it flows to clubs across Europe for its players. Do not pay attention to the slaves behind the curtain.
Munich is one of the clubs that strongly urged UEFA to install Financial Fair Play – you may remember that from such episodes as the complete bamboozling of it by Manchester City and the Court of Arbitration For Sport this summer – to keep clubs like PSG and Man City and Chelsea from spending much more money on them than they do simply because Middle East governments like Russia oligarchs had it lying around. But Munich’s hands are not clean either.
Munich has had a sponsorship deal with Qatar since February 2018, via the government-owned Qatar Airways airline, and the company has a patch on the sleeves of the Munich jerseys. The club has also held a winter training camp during the Bundesliga winter break in Qatar since 2011, which is clearly an advertisement intended for Germans to spend their winter holidays in the country, if only indirectly. Qatar also owns part of Audi, which is a subsidiary of Volkswagen, which is also just a part owner of Bayern Munich.
Before entering into the agreement, Bayern claimed not to be aware of Qatar’s record of human rights violations. Strangely enough, the club saw before the deal went into effect, only asking the German government for advice. That’s the kind of thing the US government would just forget to mention, but the German?
Several fan groups of the club have asked the club to separate ties with Qatar, but those squares have fallen on deaf ears. Some have even considered that the club has banned some fans from their home games, claimed for other reasons but in fact silenced their protests over the club’s relationship with Qatar.
Sunday’s game is hot for football fans. It is the team that has been the best in the world all season (Munich) against a brilliant array of talent that would finally come after years of dramatic (and hilarious) failure in Europe (PSG). It might be the rare exciting finale, because the opportunity appeals to both teams and you get a tense, tight affair. Both teams can score oodles of goals. It’s a chance for Neymar to finally place his place among Messi and Ronaldo, whom he left Messi of Barcelona to do. It’s an opportunity for Robert Lewandowski to add to his very incomprehensible 55 goals in all leagues though and cement his place as the world’s top center forward. Alphonso Davies may be the first Canadian to establish himself as a world star (if he has not already). The storylines and intrigues just go on and on.
But the bottom line is the shady money and groups that modern football has attached itself to, and how that money makes everyone powerless and honestly unmotivated to do a lot of it. Migrant workers are still dying, women are still free to be raped by their husbands, the problems remain unlimited, but it seems as long as these two clubs keep the star players through the doors and trophies in the cases, no one can do a much is ever about it.
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