If Paris Saint-Germain beat Bayern Munich in Sunday’s Champions League final in Lisbon, the photographs will probably be tears of joy from Neymar or wild party scenes in the French capital, but enjoying the glory of all this will be the emir of Qatar. . .
The club’s first appearance at the latest Elite Club European festival comes the month it celebrates its 50th anniversary, but is the starting point for the whole of June 30, 2011.
It was then that Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) bought the PSG, and its president Nasser al-Khelaifi promised to make the club “a wonderful team and a strong logo on the foreign scene”.
There is no doubt that QSI has achieved this, even if Qatar criticizes the motivations of the small gas-rich country protruding from the Arab desert.
PSG recently won its seventh French name in 8 seasons and its fourth national treath in six years.
Now, after a dozen seasons of disappointing performances on the continental stage, they have reached the biggest and most prestigious club game of all.
Brazilian stars Paris Saint-Germain Neymar and Thiago Silva leave the team’s hotel in Lisbon on Friday, two days before French club take on Bayern Munich in Champions League final Photo: AFP/LLUIS GENE
“Since we got here, the Champions League has been our dream, and we’re about to know our dream now,” Khelaifi said after the team beat RB Leipzig in the semi-finals.
Wonderful PSG Before QSI – Owned by French pay TV giant Canal Plus in the 1990s, with stars like George Weah, they won the league in 1994 and reached the semi-finals of the Champions League a year later.
They won their European trophy to date, the European Cup Winners’ Cup, in 1996.
But in 2011, it’s a club in a desperate situation.
Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, the top two beloved players in football history when they signed for PSG in August 2017 Photo: POOL / David Ramos
They had finished fourth in Ligue 1, but a year earlier they were 13 degrees.
Crowds at Parc des Princes declined when the club stopped promoting tickets for members of two rival amateur teams due to vandalism issues.
With Khelaifi, a respected figure in Qatar, PSG is in fact another club.
It only took them two years to succeed in fifth place in deloitte’s Football Money League. Its sales in 2012/13 were just under 400 million euros ($471 million), after quadrupled in a short time under QSI.
Only Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern and Manchester United sat there.
That season, PSG returned to the Champions League after an eight-year absence and won their first Ligue 1 name in the days of Qatar.
PSG President Nasser Al-Khelaifi with Leonardo Club Director in Lisbon Photo: AFP/FRANCK FIFE
They did the David Beckham signature. Major industry agreements have been signed with the Qatar Tourism Authority and Qatari cell phone provider Ooredoo.
Deloitte’s latest figures put it fifth with a turnover of 635. 9 million euros.
The PSG has incurred the two largest movement rates in history, signing Neymar of Barcelona for 222 million euros and Kylian Mbappé of Monaco for one million euros in 2017.
The club has spent a total of around 1. 3 billion euros on moving fees during those nine years.
In terms of football, it’s all about good fortune on the field, but QSI passes and Qatar’s motivations for participation go much further.
QSI’s rudimentary online page speaks of a vision “to be identified worldwide as the leading company in investment in sports, recreation and entertainment in Qatar and abroad”.
The choice of PSG, founded in one of Europe’s largest and most glamorous cities, is one way for Qatar to expand its logo following its successful commitment to the 2022 World Cup.
“It’s about building a brand, linking to prestigious tournaments on the one hand, and glamorous and successful clubs on the other,” Nicholas McGeehan, director of Fair Square Projects, researcher and prominent advocate for the rights of migrant workers. in the Gulf, he told AFP.
The World Cup and Qatar’s ownership of the PSG have highlighted the country’s remedy for migrant workers, but reputational benefits seem to outweigh the costs.
“At the end of the day, it’s about politics, strength and influence, not football,” McGeehan says.
On the streets of Doha, there is more concentration in the English Premier League than in the PSG, even if interest is growing.
The PSG shop at The Villaggio shopping centre in Doha this week adorned with a sign proclaiming “WE ARE PARIS – LISBON 2020” covering part of the showcase.
“If they win, they’ll do two victory tours, one in Paris and one here,” said Abdul, the store’s director, dressed in the latest PSG strip.
It’s just Paris: Qatar Airways has signed a sponsorship deal with Bayern and headed to Twitter calling the #Qlassico event.
For McGeehan, the good fortune of the PSG will be definitively reflected in Qatar and Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, especially in the context of the Gulf crisis that saw Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other neighboring states break diplomatic, economic and Doha relations.
“In terms of the emir’s prestige, this has great political merit for him. Its political capital will be booming among Qatari,” he said.
“Your logo is dotted through the largest football setting that takes position every year in Europe. They’re going to have the biggest football game in the world in a few years. It couldn’t be better for them at this point. “