Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia
Football is caught in the clutches of evil
A comment by Stephan Uersfeld
03/10/2022, 1:40 p.m
Gianni Infantino meets with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Qatari owner of Paris St. Germain is said to have raged in the referee’s cabin after the loss to Real Madrid and Abramovich is hit with sanctions. Football can no longer be saved.
You can have a break there too. Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé against Real Madrid’s gang of old men. So if Paris St. Germain is eliminated from the Champions League, things can’t be right. And so a culprit was soon found. Referee Danny Makkelie had whistled alarmingly badly, thought PSG owner Nasser Al-Khelaifi and set out to tell him exactly that in clear words. Didn’t go down too well.
He didn’t want to hear that at all. Objects are said to have flown and the referee’s cabin was left in a condition that was no longer quite so respectable. It can happen in the heat of the moment. It got really annoying when someone dared to film that as well. “I’ll kill you,” was the only logical answer. What happens in the cabin stays in the cabin and does not leak out. Especially not when it concerns a man of honor like the PSG President.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi is not only the owner of Paris St. Germain, but also CEO of the beIN Media Group, which has made a difference to football. They brought him money and fame. Always better players with more and more money. Which is of course also in the interest of UEFA, which attracts attention worldwide with its premium brand “Champions League” and whose executive committee has been Al-Khelaifi, a former tennis player who once lost to Thomas Muster in two sets, since 2019.
Maybe Makkiele was lucky
Only last year, Al-Khelaifi bravely withstood the rebel clubs who wanted to set up their own Super League without UEFA. He wasn’t there, maybe also because he owns the rights to the “Champions League” in the MENA region, the Middle East and North Africa with beIN, and the rights are around 550 million euros for three years laid. For the people in MENA, there should be a triumph for the team from Paris-Qatar, just so shortly before the 2022 World Cup in the desert state. Nothing will happen again. The anger is understandable.
At least, one might say, Makkelie was not found dismembered in the cabin. Football has its hand on it. Appeasement in the best sense. That just doesn’t happen in top global sport. Also because there are people like FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who always tries to find a balance and goes where it could hurt.
Only a few days ago, after this not only untimely development around his old acquaintance Vladimir Putin had leveled off at a fairly high level of excitement and FIFA had reacted with all consistency, Infantino, who recently lived in Qatar, was already traveling again. He met the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had rid himself of an unwelcome critic in 2018 almost in self-defense, but has now been embraced by football for some time as the mastermind at Newcastle United. Of course also from Infantino, who wants to bring peace to the world with global sport. They think in these categories at FIFA.
In the clutches of madness
“The meeting was about opportunities for sporting cooperation and ways to develop and expand them,” said a Saudi press agency in a few words about the meeting between bin Salman and Infantino. The agency made it clear: This is about the future of the game. Especially now that a reliable partner for the popular sport has broken away with Putin’s Russia. Which of course is extremely annoying for the Chelsea Chelsea club, which is no longer allowed to sell tickets and, according to the latest sanctions, cannot even be sold by the previous owner Roman Abramovich. The oligarch’s relationship with Putin remains unclear. But the British Ministry of Finance is certain: he is close to him. That’s why his assets are frozen for now. And his club, Chelsea, completely incapacitated.
What we learned from the meeting between Infantino and bin Salman in Riyadh earlier this week, yesterday from Al-Khelaifi’s outburst in Madrid, and from the sanctions imposed on Abramovich is nothing new. Football is in the clutches of autocrats, despots and dictators. In his turbo-capitalist greed for more and more money and in his megalomaniacal overconfidence, he has maneuvered himself into a dead end. And no one is seriously interested in going into reverse. There is no outcry, there is no indignation and there is also no boycott by the viewers, at most a very slowly progressing alienation. All the monstrosities are priced in. At the highest level, the game is long lost. It can hardly save itself on its own. That is the bitter realization of these days.