I’ve rarely had good things to say about Qatar – not too keen on any state which treats the widows of dead immigrant World Cup construction workers with barely concealed contempt.
But when I argued that a functioning democracy was one of its better points, quite a few years ago, I received a text message from Manchester City, who seemed perturbed. Was someone briefing for Qatar? they asked me. Why was I writing this?
It was a sign of how Abu Dhabi didn’t want any of their Gulf rivals – least of all the noisy upstart Qataris – muscling in on their positive publicity, at a time when they were enjoying a clear run at using the Premier League to burnish their image and wield global influence.
When Chinese premier Xi Jinping visited the UK in 2015, he headed to the Etihad Stadium and was pictured with star striker Sergio Aguero. The picture ran on the front page of the Financial Times.
Well, those halcyon days are over. The head-start Abu Dhabi has enjoyed over its Middle Eastern rivals, already beginning to recede, was shot to pieces by Manchester City’s extraordinary 4-3 defeat by Saudi Arabian side Al Hilal in Orlando, Florida, on Monday night.
And City can have no complaints, because the Saudis have followed precisely the same model that they did, 17 years ago: throw virtually limitless petrodollars at building a team to challenge the establishment, in the face of great ridicule. The money always talks in the end.
Manchester City were stunned by Al Hilal in the Club World Cup last 16, losing 4-3
Al Hilal are one of a number of state-owned Saudi clubs that are seeing the fruits of their investment
The Club World Cup is a Saudi-subsidised nonsense – there were one million empty seats in the group stage – but Monday night’s result was built on proper football foundations
The Club World Cup is a Saudi-subsidised nonsense – there were one million empty seats in the group stage – but Monday night’s result was built on proper football foundations. The excellence of Al Hilal’s Ruben Neves, Kalidou Koulibaly, man of the match Brazilian Malcom, whose pace was too much for City, and goalkeeper Yassine Bounou, outstanding all tournament.
A sharp, intelligent counter-attacking display which left Abu Dhabi’s City – for so long a byword for intelligent, progressive football – looking claggy and beatable.
The new Middle East bragging rights this brought for Saudi Arabia added to what has been 48 hours from hell for Abu Dhabi and its self-proclaimed understated business sophistication.
The established narrative at City portrays Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the club’s owner, as a wise and beneficent individual, presiding over the club’s glories from afar.
But a 4,000-word New York Times report published in recent days claimed that Mansour has played a central role in helping a Sudanese army commander whose forces have brought famine and one of the world’s gravest humanitarian crises amid that country’s civil war.
Mansour’s relationship with Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, the paper reported, has been part of an aggressive Emirati push to acquire ports and strategic minerals to expand UAE influence across Africa and the Middle East and establish the Gulf nation as a heavyweight regional power.
Mansour and the Emirati Foreign Ministry have not replied to questions about the report, said the New York Times, in a report it said was compiled from the testimony of more than a dozen American, African and Arab officials.
Now Abu Dhabu awaits the outcome of the Premier League’s case against City on 130 charges on financial impropriety. Whatever the outcome, Mansour’s executive supremo Khaldoon al-Mubarak, City’s chairman, will portray it as evidence of prejudice against Abu Dhabi’s enterprising challenge to the football order.
Sheik Mansour (right, pictured with his brother and UAE head of state Mohammed bin Zayed) has been accused of helping a Sudanese army commander
City are facing a challenge from the very same petrodollar methods that got them into the global elite
It took Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari owners 14 years to win the Champions League – the Saudi clubs have risen to the top far sooner
But City represent that order, now. They’re the ones facing a challenge from the Middle East arrivistes, as more and more state-owned clubs come to power.
Qatari-owned PSG have, after 14 years, finally discovered how to put a successful football team together and win the Champions League. The Saudi state has huge ambition for Newcastle United.
Saudi, future World Cup hosts in 2034, have shown at the CWC that the £750milllion they have paid out for club players is paying a dividend.
This is sportswashing 2.0 isn’t it? Instead of going abroad to buy a team to launder an image, here we have a Middle East Gulf state doing it on home soil, by creating their own sides.
The USA has tried to establish a strong domestic league for years, in a country where the sport is played by tens of millions, yet never come close to being credible. Saudi Arabia, where no one plays football, have done it in a couple of years. Might the nascent Saudi teams supply Newcastle? Yes.
As this Middle Eastern fight for geopolitical supremacy plays out through the prism of football, you have to ask what hope there is for everyone else. City have made it clear that they want to be allowed to use their state-owned companies to plough in as much ‘sponsorship’ money as possible. Thank God for the fight the league has already waged against that.
Thank God, too, that there are Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) limiting the losses clubs can incur over a three-year period. They provide some kind of check on unfettered Gulf spending, without which the top of the Premier League would soon be beyond the non-petrodollar states.
But despite the guardrails, we have just witnessed the size of the challenge from the biggest Gulf state of all. I don’t have good things to say about Saudi Arabia either – not too keen on any state which abducts journalists and dismembers them with a bone saw – but they’re coming for football and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Saudi money helped to bring Newcastle their first major domestic trophy for 70 years
Saudi state-owned clubs have spent big to attract some of the world’s biggest names
There’s nothing City can do to stop the march of the Saudi clubs
The spellbinding advance from F1’s next frontier
I enjoyed F1: The Movie. Cheesy, yes, but an absolutely spellbinding sense of how it is to sit in the cockpit and race at that speed. The silence in there during several almost transcendental moments. Beautiful.
The $300million production’s most mind-blowing number was the $40m of on-car advertising and branding sold for a fictional racing car, in fictional F1 races, for the film.
The racing scenes, shot using custom-built Mercedes and 6K-resolution cameras mounted inside cockpits, delivered something we don’t see in the Netflix Drive to Survive series which has transformed F1.
Breathtaking motor racing. Could this kind of content be the real F1’s next frontier? Anything seems possible in a sport which has utterly transformed its own fortunes.
Wimbledon has lost a much-loved piece of it soul
I spent Monday drifting around Wimbledon’s more remote courts, yearning for the line judges who have been taken away, lost to AI.
I saw Jelena Ostapenko raging against the machines, during her defeat to Brit Sonay Kartal – ironically clapping the camera used in the judges’ places which foot-faulted her in the last set.
The players’ challenges to decisions and the crowd reactions to them, have been such a part of the theatre. Some will say we must move on, but a significant and much-loved piece of the spectacle has gone.
Bullingham slips up
Sarina Wiegman brought glory to the Lionesses – but she cannot be guaranteed her job regardless of what happens in the Women’s Euros
We have the superb prospect of the Women’s Euros starting on Wednesday.
Some doubt England’s chances of progressing from a group stage which pitches them with France and the Netherlands. I’m not so pessimistic. I saw first-hand at the last World Cup how they grind out progress.
But did the FA’s Mark Bullingham really need to say that manager Sarina Wiegman stays, no matter how the tournament goes?
How very FA. Terrified of change. Happy to bump along. Can’t we have a bit more ruthlessness? Something to instil the optimal competitive edge? Decide these things when the tournament’s done.
