I could only see one story on Saturday night as I watched the scenes from Munich unfolding on my television screen. As Paris Saint-Germain annihilated Inter Milan in the Champions League final at the Allianz Arena, all I could think of was Luis Enrique and a life in which loss and victory were so inextricably intertwined.
The images that flooded the mind were not of Desire Doue’s goals or the brilliance of Ousmane Dembele but of a moment a decade ago when the PSG coach’s daughter, Xana, carried a Barcelona flag around the pitch at the Olympiastadion in Berlin after Barca had won the Champions League and her dad planted it in the centre circle for her.
Xana was only five years old then but four years later, she had been taken away. She was diagnosed with the rare bone cancer osteosarcoma and her father, by then coach of Spain, walked away from the job to spend all the time he could by her side in her last months.
After she had gone, Luis Enrique said she would be the star that guided his family and so she has. He has said repeatedly how lucky he feels that Xana was in his life for nine years and that through all the memories and the joys they shared, she is still in his life now.
After the final whistle on Saturday, the PSG fans unfurled a wonderfully moving tifo imagining Xana standing next to her dad, this time planting the PSG flag in the centre circle in Munich, father and daughter still side by side. Watching from afar, that tifo will remain my abiding memory of that final.
So it was a beautiful human story. A coach’s triumph over grief and the tributes to the little girl he lost was one of the most uplifting sporting stories of the year. It was right to rejoice in it and, on a human level, to celebrate it.
Xana plants a Barcelona flag in centre circle after her father won the 2015 Champions League
After the final whistle on Saturday, the PSG fans unfurled a wonderfully moving tifo imagining Xana standing next to her dad, this time planting the PSG flag in the centre circle in Munich
Luis Enrique’s triumph over grief and the tributes to the little girl he lost was an uplifting story
But let’s not confuse joy for an inspirational man with our emotions towards what a first Champions League trophy for PSG, a club owned by the Qatari state, means for the sport.
What I can’t accept is the wider idea that PSG’s victory was good for the game. It wasn’t. It was the opposite of that.
‘This is a win for football,’ Rio Ferdinand said during his final appearance on TNT Sports and even though I have a lot of respect for him as a former player and as a pundit, I don’t think he could have been more wrong. PSG’s victory was a victory for state ownership and it was a defeat for football.
PSG’s 5-0 win was another spectacular triumph for Qatar’s lavish and ongoing sportswashing project that is increasingly muting criticism of the emirate’s autocratic regime and its appalling treatment of migrant workers.
No one talks about that any more. No one challenged Ferdinand’s assertion on air. One or two journalists wrote about it on the night and were shouted down from the bully pulpit of social media. Now is not the time, they were told.
I know from my own limited experience that now never seems to be the time when it comes to discussing the corrosive effects of state ownership of football clubs.
It is almost as if it is a taboo subject now. The broadcasting companies, in particular, don’t touch it. Whatever one’s view of Gary Lineker, he had the power and conviction to speak out on the BBC at the start of the 2022 World Cup. Now he is gone, it is hard to imagine anyone else emulating his stance.
PSG’s triumph is not some sort of football fairy story. Again, it’s the opposite of that. The club have the highest wage bill – by a distance – of any team in Europe.
PSG’s Champions League triumph isn’t some sort of football fairy story. It’s the opposite of that
PSG’s wage bill dwarfed that of Inter Milan and is the highest – by some distance – in Europe
PSG have won the French league title 11 times in 13 years, removing any sense of competition
They have made the concept of competition in French football an outmoded idea. They have won the French league title 11 times in the last 13 years and their wage bill dwarfed that of Inter, so it should hardly have been a surprise their victory was so emphatic.
Even though they have found a way to remain compliant with French football’s financial rules, PSG’s hegemony is just one reason we should be thankful for the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).
PSR is not perfect and the clubs with the best lawyers and most opaque structures are increasingly adept at circumventing them. But despite the fact Manchester City – the first state-owned club to win the Champions League – won an unprecedented four English top-flight titles in a row and established a level of domination in this country we have never seen before, PSR has preserved competition for now, at least.
The idea that limits on spending are anathema in the world of sport was discredited a long time ago. The best sports leagues in the world – the NFL, MLB and the NBA – all operate with a complex system of financial checks and balances, including a salary cap, that have stopped them being dominated by their most powerful teams.
It is part of the reason why the New York Yankees have not won the World Series since 2009, why the Dallas Cowboys, the richest team in the NFL, have not won the Super Bowl since 1996, and why the New York Knicks, one of the three richest teams in the NBA, have not won a championship since 1973.
Those leagues do not run the kind of spending free-for-all so many advocate in the Premier League. All are leagues that reward good coaching and good recruitment and punish profligacy and stupidity. It is the way it should be.
The kind of financial imbalance enjoyed by state-owned teams such as PSG should be abhorred, not celebrated. They do not stimulate the game. They kill it. Only those who crave the tyranny of the minority would argue otherwise.
It is part of the reason it has been faintly amusing to witness the indignation of those among the Newcastle support who have sold their souls for the wealth of their Saudi masters, only to realise that having the richest owners in sport does not mean they can buy the Premier League title every season.
Manchester City have come closest to PSG-style dominance but even they cannot outrun PSR
Spending limits mean the mega-rich Dallas Cowboys have not won a Super Bowl since 1996
It has been faintly amusing to witness the indignation of those among the Newcastle support who have sold their souls for the wealth of their Saudi masters and not been blessed with titles
Guess what, you might have to earn that right with good management and wise husbandry and, in Eddie Howe, Newcastle have a manager who has done a quite outstanding job and continues to guide the club on an upwards trajectory.
Luis Enrique has done the same at PSG. He is to be celebrated for that and he is to be celebrated for what he stands for as a father and as a man. To celebrate PSG’s triumph in Munich and the message it sends, though, would be to hurry football down the road to disintegration.
Woods showed what TNT have been missing
Laura Woods was the anchor of TNT Sports’ Champions League final coverage on Saturday
It was great to have Laura Woods as the anchor of TNT Sports’ Champions League final coverage on Saturday.
She has the courage to maintain a level of professional distance from her panellists and interview subjects that so many of her male counterparts conspicuously lack.
Her absence from our screens after the birth of her first child only served to remind us she is among the very best at what she does.
