The dark truth behind PSG’s Champions League dominance | OneFootball

Qatar again has the European Cup. It’s a simple assertion of reality, that warrants a lot of repetition and reflection, due its mind-bending layers.

You only have to consider one huge shift in four years.

This week is now finally the point where football moves from the intensive ubiquity of the club game to the unique build-up to the World Cup. That means there’s an extra timeliness to the Champions League final being unusually close to the tournament’s start, given what happened in it.

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Qatar’s sportswashing with their backing of PSG has largely been forgotten (Getty)

Four years ago, there was a wall of justified fury over every issue to do with Qatar: sportswashing, a “slave labour” system based on racial discrimination, wider suppression of human rights and specific human stories like the imprisonment of whistleblower Abdullah Ibhais.

And now, as their European club team retains the Champions League… there’s virtually none of that.

There’s effusive praise for Paris Saint-Germain, as well as celebration, glory and endearing little details like the sunglasses that the brilliant Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was wearing.

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Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s eyewear received more attention than Qatar’s sportswashing (Reuters)

There is also of course an appropriate metaphor within that reflection on those shades.

Any discussion on the “morality” of anything to do with the final has only revolved Arsenal’s football. There was even the convenient leak of a Sir Alex Ferguson message to PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi about how the team who tried to play football won.

All of this carries an extra resonance given what PSG have achieved, and what being the European champions is intended to represent.

Retaining the trophy has long been seen as the gold-standard feat, elusive to all but the most elevated teams. Such a side are supposed to say something grander about European football.

Here, the silence actually says so much more.

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PSG achieved the gold standard of back-to-back Champions Leagues (Getty)

The truth is we’re long past the quaint days where there was an old-world mystique to the title, where the football pitch was all, and Alfredo Di Stefano and Eusebio would shake hands in acknowledgement of a torch being passed.

The handshakes of real relevance to where the Champions League will go happen in the executive boxes above the pitch. You might have noticed pictures of one-time Super League rebel Florentino Perez standing happily with Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin and Al-Khelaifi.

That is where part of the power lies. And the following is its effect.

The generally rhapsodic response to PSG’s football and Pep Guardiola’s departure feels like the moment that autocratic state money became fully integrated and accepted in elite football, with any concerns by now really pushed to the margins.

And that was exactly the long-term point of this: normalisation. So much of it that nobody cares any more.

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PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi could celebrate the achievement of a key goal (Getty)

It has largely escaped attention that PSG’s second successive victory made it three state-owned teams winning in four years. The prestige of retaining the trophy gradually feels a lot less special when so much of this is predictable due to greater forces.

Mere mention of Qatari sportswashing this weekend brought wails of pushback, especially on social media.

There were of course demands to “change the record because it isn’t working”, a curious request when so many voices work in the opposite direction.

There was also classic whataboutery, and references to Arsenal’s sponsorships, ownership and wider western imperialism.

And, yes, absolutely, critical discussions should be had on the English champions’ deals with Emirates, Visit Rwanda and Deel.

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Arsenal’s deal with the likes of Visit Rwanda also deserves to come under scrutiny (PA)

It’s also long been argued on these very pages that capitalist billionaires should not be allowed to own social institutions like football clubs, either. For all the praise that the Kroenkes are now getting, as a business their ultimate aim is to extract money from football.

That very contrast in ambition is nevertheless one of many contrasts with state ownership, who ultimately want to use everything that football means. The difference is one of scale, of intention, of nature.

Capitalist billionaires aren’t necessarily good even for the clubs they own but, in terms of what is actually worse for the wider game, autocratic state influence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum.

It has become far too easy to forget this.

As a pointed example, America’s many billionaires may wield a lot of political influence, but they don’t set laws. Al-Khelaifi’s primary responsibility is to the Emir of Qatar, who does determine laws, by fiat.

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Al-Khelaifi’s ultimate responsibility is to the Qatari Emir (Reuters)

And as incomprehensible as the billions of the Kroenkes are to everyday people, such figures are negligible next to an actual carbon energy economy.

You only have to look at the effects of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Through its production of liquefied natural gas, the owners of PSG have a profound influence on the global economy. Your cost of living is directly linked to their exports

What a turn by Kvaratskhelia, though...

And what do you think the long-term effects of this kind of power on football are?

Well we can see one in Ligue 1, which has been rendered a joke that the governing body can barely still sell broadcast rights for. The majority of the clubs even appear to be in this bizarre cuckolded relationship with PSG and their ownership.

More worrying for the wider game is how this is all starting to spill out.

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PSG have completely taken over Frnech football (AFP/Getty)

Because the manner in which one of the five “major” domestic leagues can be used as some light training for PSG is now affecting the Champions League.

All of PSG’s stellar front three individually played less domestic league minutes than Tottenham’s Mohammed Kudus, a player injured for months. Little wonder Arsenal had to sit in.

The rigours of their own schedule meant they were forced to play a 21-year-old centre-half as a makeshift right-back, and he was ultimately caught out by Kvaratskhelia’s sprightliness.

And, again, this is not to discount Arsenal’s own financial advantages. These pages have been just as critical of the cannibalising wealth of the Premier League and its super clubs.

But you again come back to scale, the bigger picture, and how football repeatedly sees the same core problems of disparity and power amplified as you go up the pyramid.

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Cristhian Mosquera brought down Kvaratskhelia, handing PSG the opportunity they needed to equalise (PA)

The Premier League clubs have suddenly been greatly affected by the expanded European calendar, and who has a significant say in that?

That would be Al-Khelaifi, the chairman of European Football Clubs (EFC), who also leads a broadcasting company, in BeIn, that also have significant influence.

That is how this really works, that’s the deeper effect of state money.

One of the main impressions to emerge from the higher-level meetings around Budapest this week is just how openly in thrall Uefa president Ceferin is to Al-Khelaifi. The new commercial relationship between Uefa and EFC through the UC3 joint venture means the former have to get things approved by the latter, which essentially means European football’s notionally most powerful figure is running things by the emissary of the Emir of Qatar.

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Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has been described as in thrall to Al-Khelaifi (PA)

Al-Khelaifi is duly described as an abrasive figure in Uefa Executive Committee meetings, with numerous sources recounting how even passive questions are met with responses like “who do you think you are”. Ceferin is often seen as acquiescing, or just nodding along.

Well, we now know who the European champions are, and we can see where the power lies.

It’s all in plain sight, helpfully showcased by Qatar Airways billboards.

Not that you’d know any of this by the noise around it.