The French football league has reached a point of jeopardy. The new round of TV rights is yet to be sold. The president of Paris Saint-Germain needs a bumper deal to satisfy FFP. The president of beIN Sports, the most likely white knight, is holding out on a late offer. A sympathetic ear in the Qatari government has yet to be found.
Luckily there is some hope of a breakthrough. Mainly because all of the parties mentioned above are, in a rare note of good fortune, the same person. And all of them are called Nasser al-Khelaifi.
Essentially, what the president of PSG needs to do is persuade himself to give himself a large sum of money. Perhaps, if he really plays hardball with himself, this might require extra political pressure from himself, as minister without portfolio and head of Qatari Sports Investments.
At which point Khelaifi can return to the French League (ie himself) in triumph and from there send word of the good news to the European Club Association (also himself), the Uefa exco (himself) and the Fifa Club World Cup (also himself).
L’État, c’est moi. Nous. Lui. Whatever. Some people are said to have a finger or two in the pie. Khelaifi has had both fists jammed right in there so deep for so long it is now impossible to tell where the pie actually begins. Never mind fingers. He is the pie.
There was further evidence of Khelaifi’s amazing will to power in the extraordinary scenes this week at the Élysée Palace. Although in the first instance it was just a great moment for extreme sporting-political weirdness.
Kylian Mbappé was the star turn at president Macron’s reception for the Qatari prime minister on Tuesday. But while Kylian was only there for the heavily sauced meat served by a man who hates you (also known as: traditional Parisian dining) Khelaifi stayed on for the main business of the week, high-level government talks over brokering a ceasefire in Gaza.
Yes, really. The man who signed Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting was also present this week at talks on the single greatest military and humanitarian crisis on the planet. Khelaifi’s presence did at least raise some eyebrows, to the extent the Qatari government issued a statement insisting that while PSG’s chairman would be present at “multiple meetings between the delegations” he would not actually “participate in discussions concerning the conflict taking place in the Middle East”.
Well, OK then. But are we sure? He has dealt with Neymar’s dad quite a lot. Either way it feels like a new high water mark in football’s intrusion on the global stage, a bit like the UK government insisting Dan Ashworth sits next to the US ambassador during talks on the Ukraine war, or Margaret Thatcher sending Don Howe to the 1986 US-Soviet Reykjavík summit.
But then, this is Nasser, who remains surprisingly low profile in this county, but is by now surely the single most important person in world football. His story is remarkable in itself. NAK didn’t come from power. His dad was a fisherman. He turned out to be good at tennis, playing on the tour, sleeping in his car to avoid the hotel cockroaches, reaching No 995 in the world, and getting his big break when he was asked to coach the then-heir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.
Fast-forward and NAK is safely enshrined as world football’s brutally competent Mr Fixit, present at all the big moments in power-flash soft wool overcoat, the hair good, jawline good, looking like the youngest ever president of the intergalactic federation. And around the table now while France and Qatar discuss the prospects of avoiding Armageddon in the Middle East.
There are wider points of interest here. Most obviously prima facie evidence of the confusion, blurred lines and structural problems inherent in allowing nation states to effectively nationalise your sporting institutions, and to play investment-for-influence games with your government. With specific reference, for an English audience, to the case of the Premier League versus Manchester City and all potentially disastrous issues arising therefrom.
Paris provides a uniquely compromised case. In the background of the world peace stuff Macron has been politicking for a TV football rights deal from the people who also own France’s most powerful club, while sustaining the fiction European football can effectively regulate this entity, that there are working rules around a club/state/league feeding itself at one remove.
Meanwhile Qatar’s investment fund, so deep into France’s infrastructure it can probably grab it by the throat from the inside, has just promised another €10bn for start-ups and tech firms. The grubby hostilities with the socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo over Paris’s refusal to sell Qatar the Parc des Princes (also know as: a huge chunk of actual Paris) rumble on.
How is this all going to resolve itself? Fairly? Cleanly? Transparently? And never mind the distant but hair-curling prospect of Marine Le Pen becoming president in 2027, Le Pen who has been openly hostile in the past to Qatari investment in the poorer Paris suburbs (Muslims, you see; great replacement-style stuff). Should this come to pass get ready for the wildest set of contortions on every front, and good luck with all that to French football.
What does this have to do with England? The Élysée tableau is showing us how this works, right out in the open. A £10bn investment? Yeah we’ve got one of those too in the shape of Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co, partners of UK government plc, and overseen by none other than Sheikh Mansour, owner of Manchester City. Fingers. Pies. Shaking hands in the middle.
We know the Premier League charges against City have been discussed at government level. Famously Mohammed bin Salman, another potential mega-investor, had a direct line in to Boris Johnson when the Newcastle takeover looked as if it might hit a snag. Faced with real world investments and alliances, it is worth remembering that sport is simply a toyshop, irrelevant beyond its own bubble.
This is the reality behind the scenes in Paris, a beaming Kylian, a tuxedoed Nasser, levers of power so profoundly indulged we have a football club chairman around the Gaza peace talks table. FFP you say? Some football rules made up in a committee room? Fine. But we will have to discuss that once the cheque has cleared.
