Waldemar Iglesias
04/28/2021 6:11 AM
Clarín.com
sports
International Soccer
Updated 04/28/2021 10:47
There are reasons that are counted on the logic of money devoted to football.
A phenomenon of this sport at this time
. After his first season without titles, for the 17/18 campaign, Guardiola was a surprising protagonist in the most onerous transfer market in history. He asked and they brought him the two most expensive wingers of all time. Kyle Walker (57 million euros) and Benjamin Mendy (56.5 million). And as an alternative he added Danilo (30 million). Soon he added 65 million euros to Aymeric Laporte, French central defender, from Athletic Club de Bilbao.
Vertigo these days of wallet football.
He also incorporated the second most expensive goalkeeper in history at the beginning of that campaign: he paid 40 million for the Brazilian Ederson.
Only surpassed by the transfer of Gianluigi Buffon from Parma to Juventus, at the beginning of this century.
Thus began to forge this City that La Orejona wants to build for the first time.
Kun Agüero celebrate Manchester City's most recent title, the League Cup.
He also incorporated the
second most expensive goalkeeper in history
at the beginning of that campaign
: he paid 40 million for the Brazilian Ederson.
Only surpassed by the transfer of Gianluigi Buffon from Parma to Juventus, at the beginning of this century.
Thus began to forge this City that
La Orejona
wants to build for the first time
.
Those almost 250 million euros that Pep invested to defend himself constitute
a figure higher than the budget of the Ministries of Defense of 52 countries
, according to data from the International Institute for Peace Studies in Stockholm (SIPRI). Among them are, for example, Iceland, Cuba, Malta, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Albania, Guatemala and Senegal.
There is no coincidence in such a level of investment. The Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment, the investment group from the United Arab Emirates that bought City in 2008, knew about the commercial phenomenon that English football and, above all, the Champions League meant and means.
They paid 250 million euros. The club today is valued at more than two billion.
It ranks fifth in the world, behind historical giants such as United, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
An exponential growth for a club that in 1999 played in the third English category
.
The first relevant decision in this new era of the City was taken in the Persian Gulf, when the Minister of Affairs of the Presidency of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mansur Bin Zayed al Nahian, appointed a head of the emirate of Abu Dhabi as the new president. of the club: Khaldoon Al Mubarak.
The royal family is the one that puts up the money that allows record hires.
It is not just an economic question.
For them
the most popular sport is a way of showing themselves.
A kind of window to the world.
"In City training
sessions we screwed that the sheikh was going to end up buying Messi and Cristiano,
" Pablo Zabaleta - a historian of the City's Celestial Era - told this newspaper.
Even in the dressing room they wrote down the names of the figures who could arrive for the following season.
That game became a reality and a daily matter these days
.
Mauro Icardi and Leandro Paredes, two bets for PSG.
(AFP)
The scene seems distant, but it is also a portrait in the present time. In that December 2010, in Zurich,
Joseph Blatter read the five letters of amazement: Qatar
. Then, right after, the emir of the country that had just been chosen as the organizer of the 2022 World Cup, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Than, said it: "I appreciate that you believe in us. In this change."
Its name is distant in the West. The world learned about him in 1995, when he overthrew his father to become the highest local authority. He also became known for having provided a headquarters and financed the huge Al-Jazeera television network. For that, he was criticized by the United States government for "taking sides" in the War in Iraq and the Palestinian Intifada. Oddly or not so much, Sheikh Hamad is a loyal ally of the United States in the Middle East and this small emirate is the main headquarters for American university campuses in the region.
He seems capable of hugging everyone, depending on the circumstance.
Qatar became independent from the United Kingdom almost nothing does: in 1971. It is such a young country that it seems incredible that it already organizes a World Cup for adults.
Also in the United States, in the context of the corruption scandal in FIFA,
the alleged purchase of wills was investigated to make this territory with a Muslim majority to host the most desired and profitable of sports events
.
Since the British abandoned this space of just 11,586 square kilometers, in the middle of the Persian Gulf,
the country has not stopped growing under the protection of the millions generated by the oil and natural gas that flow from its entrails
: in its infrastructure, in its economy, in its population (in 1986, for example, just over 350,000 people lived; today more than two million inhabit it), in its ability to show itself to the planet from the brief peninsula. Today it has the highest per capita income in the world, comfortably ahead of Luxembourg, Singapore, Brunei and Norway. With a peculiarity: less than a quarter of the population was born under that Qatari heat that does not know about winters. The rest are foreigners willing to do business or hired to provide services and / or carry out activities that Qataris choose not to carry out. It also happens that the locals have a benefit that allows them to live in a leisure situation: the State, in exchange for nothing, pays them a minimum of $ 5,800 as a subsidy.
This apparently modest country has another way of showing off:
with the impact of its huge investments in sports, especially in football
. In that search, in Paris they found the perfect light to illuminate them: Paris Saint-Germain, the new rich, the new giant of European football. Since the emergence of the Qatar Investment Authority in 2011, PSG has not stopped attracting attention, winning everything inside France (the most successful cycle in the history of French football) and being a relevant protagonist of the Champions League, the obsession of Nasser Ghanim Al-Khelaïfi, the president of the corporation and owner of 70 percent of the club in the French capital.
In short,
today's football
. That of millionaires, that of wallets, that of oil, even geopolitics (
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are neighbors who look at each other sideways, who compete
). This time, their elite teams meet, for the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals: PSG and City, face to face. On the field, others may decide, the stars they hire. But it happens that a lot is decided outside.