COVER STORY denied that he was pressured to vote for Qatar, but he did anyway. Once the vote was won, PSG – who Sarkozy supports – was bought by QSI. The TV rights for French football were later bought by beIN Sports, a spin-off from Al Jazeera Sports, who paid over $1billion for them in 2014. Al Khelaifi was the founder and chairman of the company. Sheikh Tamim replaced his father as Emir in 2013. Meanwhile, a French anti-corruption investigation is currently looking into Sarkozy’s relationship with Qatar and a network of deals signed around the same time. And yet the end goal has been
achieved. Everyone knows who Qatar is and the power of that name recognition was proved over this summer’s political crisis. Qatar has been ostracised by its neighbours, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Nominally, the justification for the blockade was its alleged support for terrorism. Qatar supported Mohamed Morsi’s brief Muslim Brotherhood-aligned regime in Egypt before it was deposed, and Gulf autocracies such as the UAE see the Muslim Brotherhood’s brand of political Islam as an existential threat to their power. However, the real reason may well lie in the petty jealousies of Qatar’s
“I started thinking about how to sign Neymar three years ago...two weeks ago that operation really started” Nasser Al Khelaifi on making the deal
PSG chairman... Nasser Al Khelaifi
success and especially its freewheeling Al Jazeera TV channel, which has aired critical stories on its neighbours. Yet, even under blockade, Qatar – which has a huge surplus thanks to years of high gas prices – has not been brought to its knees. Instead, right in the middle of the crisis, Neymar was signed. “They are trying to literally score a point here,” Christopher Davidson, an academic and expert on the Gulf, told AP. “It sounds like a lot of money but given the stakes are hundreds of billions of dollars because of the World Cup, Neymar will be seen as a sound investment by Qatar. It proves they have the funds available and they have some liquidity to still be taken seriously.” For now, Qatar, QSI and PSG have more mundane issues to deal with than geopolitics: that of Financial Fairplay (FFP) compliance. Just what financial manoeuvrings PSG will undertake to avoid sanction are so far a mystery. Not that Al Khelaifi is losing any sleep over it. “I’m not really worried at all about the
Fans...Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo (left) and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy
Financial Fairplay because we have complied with the regulation since the start of the Financial Fairplay,” he said after the Neymar signing. “We are very relaxed, we have very good people around me, the management, taking care of it, so we are very relaxed about it.” To add another complication, a few weeks later, PSG signed Monaco’s Kylian Mbappe, initially as a loan move but with an agreement to buy for €140m next year, meaning any transfer fee will not show up in the 2016-17 accounts that will be analysed by FFP regulators. The two transfers have put UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin under a great deal of pressure. If they pass without censure, many argue that FFP is dead. But perhaps that is to be expected. When countries invest in football, the game has different rules. “Once a country owns a club,” Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said after the Neymar transfer, “everything is possible.” James Montague WORLD SOCCER
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