behind the meeting between PSG and Newcastle, the match between Qatar and Saudi Arabia

PSG against Newcastle is the shock match of the Football Champions League on Tuesday November 28. Crucial match in the race to qualify for the round of 16. In the background, another geopolitical match is being played out between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are two regional powers that are still rivals and rely on soft power, particularly football, to gain influence on the international scene. But the history and the method are not the same. Qatar is a pioneer, having owned Paris Saint-Germain for more than 10 years and using it as a communications tool. The Saudi strategy is more recent and less ostentatious. The kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund only bought Newcastle in 2021 and left the keys to the club to the sports sector.

Except that today Saudi Arabia wants to copy and even overtake its neighbor. Sf Qatar ended 2022 in apotheosis with “its” World Cup, 2023 is the year of the Saudi awakening. The signing of Cristiano Ronaldo in the local championship, one of the most resounding contracts in the history of football, opened a transfer window where money flows as much as oil. Riyadh imposes no limits on its ambitions. This summer the kingdom had already spent around a billion euros on around thirty players. With our sights set on the consecration of the 2034 World Cup.

An assumed “sportwashing”

Which has earned him criticism of “sportswashing”, or “whitening through sport”. especially since in addition to football, the kingdom finances a professional golf circuit, the Dakar rally, a Formula 1 grand prix, it invests in wrestling, boxing and even tennis.

Enough to attract sponsors and above all to make us forget that Saudi Arabia remains in many other areas an ultraconservative and archaic country which practices collective beheadings of prisoners, a country where homosexuality is a crime and freedom of expression a chimera, a country guilty of war crimes in Yemen. And whose crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) is according to the CIA responsible for the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. MBS is moving forward without any qualms. “It doesn’t matter what word you use. Sportwashing increased my GDP by 1%… So we will continue to do sportwashing“, he declared at the end of September to the American channel Fox News.

It is also about preparing for the post-oil era by diversifying the Saudi economy. The development of sport is one of the centerpieces of its major “Vision 2030” modernization plan.

A personal success for MBS?

The match on Tuesday, November 28 is an all the more important symbol that it is also a match of egos which is being played out between MBS and the Emir of Qatar, Tamim ben Hamad al-Thani. In the first leg Newcastle won 4 to 1. If the Magpies repeat their victory, the Saudi leader will also make it a personal success. While theSaudi Arabia today even hopes to win the 2030 Universal Expo against its competitors, Rome (in Italy) and Busan (in South Korea).