A few days after Mahner’s appearance
Rummenigge sings praises to the PSG boss
03/31/2022 11:13 am
Earlier this week, Bayern Munich’s ex-boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge took football to task and came out as a fighter for fair competition. In France he now praises PSG boss Al-Khelaifi over the green clover. So far, he has shown little interest in fair competition.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge sang a song of praise for the boss of Paris St. Germain, the Qatari Nasser Al-Khelaifi, just a few days after his lament about the way capitalism got out of hand in football. “Where was PSG before Nasser,” asked the former CEO of FC Bayern Munich in the French sports newspaper “L’Equipe” and advised the former tennis professional “under no circumstances” to leave his post at the French first division club.
Shortly after the controversial World Cup was awarded to Qatar in December 2010, Al-Khelaifi joined the then middle-class club Paris St. Germain with the investor group Qatar Sports Investments in May 2011 and took it over completely the following year. Equipped with the endless riches of the desert state, the club went on a shopping spree in the years that followed. The goal: Winning the Champions League by any means necessary.
But despite the billions for the transfers of Neymar, Lionel Messi and Co., PSG has not yet been able to adorn the international stage with the biggest title in club football. Over the years, the club has done more for undermining UEFA’s already weak financial fair play regulations than for the sport itself. In the Champions League, there was little except for a final defeat against FC Bayern Munich in 2020.
Rummenigge’s advice to PSG boss
Rummenigge asked Al-Khelaifi to be “patient”. The club has an extraordinary team, but no patience. “PSG have to understand that it’s impossible to win the Champions League overnight.” Recently there had been repeated rumors that Qatari investors would withdraw after the 2022 World Cup.
After the end of the current Champions League season against Real Madrid, Al-Khelaifi was criticized for his behavior towards the referees. In addition, Katari, who has since been promoted to the UEFA Executive Committee, is said to have threatened someone with death in connection with a film recording. UEFA has initiated disciplinary proceedings against the club and also against the club boss.
“I was in Nasser’s place and there’s no point in losing your nerve. Nasser is someone who is rational and in control. He’s always friendly, attentive, but football is a lot of emotions,” commented Rummenigge: “Next Every time I see him, I advise him not to go to the referee’s booth.”
The living contradiction
In addition to his posts at PSG and UEFA, Al-Khelaifi is also the President of European Football Clubs’ Association ECA and CEO at beIN Media Group, which owns numerous football rights, including those to the UEFA Champions League for the MENA region, the middle one East and North Africa. beIN recently acquired this again for around 550 million euros for the next three years.
At the beginning of the week, Rummenigge criticized the football industry for the lack of humility in the wake of the corona pandemic. “Salaries are still rising, transfer fees are still rising and any industry that ramps up its budgets during a crisis will eventually have to pay a bill,” he said on the Tomorrow – the Business & Style Podcast.
The ex-Bayern boss also held UEFA accountable and criticized the dominance of English Premier League clubs in European football. “The only club that can still keep up is a French club called Paris,” he added, bringing a relaxation or abolition of the 50+1 rule into play for Germany. The international competitions would “only be decided on the transfer market and we can’t keep up with the English,” said Rummenigge, describing the rule as “a huge, huge handicap”.