Over the next month, Qatar will be the most talked about country in the world.
This is how it is when the 32 best national teams and the most famous footballers - including Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo and Mbappe - come to your home, and when hundreds of millions of football fans are glued to their screens for long hours every day.
To host the World Cup - the biggest sporting event in the world (forgive me Olympic fans) - the Qataris spared nothing.
According to experts' estimates, they invested more than 220 billion dollars.
This is a crazy amount, unlike any sports project that has existed in the past.
Four years ago, Vladimir Putin's Russia spent $14.2 billion on the World Cup, which was the largest amount invested in this enterprise ever.
Qatar, a not very large peninsula on the coast of the Persian Gulf, received its independence in 1971.
Until then it belonged to the British Empire.
Already in the late 1930s, oil fields were discovered in the area, but the great economic boom began when natural gas fields were discovered on a huge scale, along the northern coast of the country.
The oil, but mainly the gas, made Qatar one of the five richest countries in the world.
The gross domestic product reached 274 billion dollars last year and the average income per capita is 113 thousand dollars per year.
Sepp Blatter: "Platini told me that he was invited to the Elysee Palace when Sarkozy hosted the crown prince of Qatar, nine days before the vote. Sarkozy told Platini: 'Look what you and your friends from UEFA can do for the World Cup to come to Qatar'"
So there is no shortage of money, but why are the Qataris willing to spend so much on a sporting event that will last only four weeks?
Is it worth investing such sums of money for a one-time event, however big it may be?
If you ask Emir Tamim bin Hamed al-Thani, the leader of the country, then there is no doubt at all.
It is an integral part of his strategy.
Qatar is the third country in the world in natural gas reserves, after Russia and Iran.
The difference is that the hundreds of billions it brings in from the sale of gas are distributed among a little more than 300 thousand citizens.
All other 2.3 million residents of the country are foreign workers.
And that's exactly the point.
Qatar is a very rich country - but small, with a tiny number of inhabitants.
In order to preserve this wealth, to strengthen its international position and above all not to take risks, Qatar decided more than 20 years ago to adopt the "soft power" method.
The American Joseph Nye, the man who founded the international relations theory of neoliberalism, is the one who coined the term.
The idea is that countries can achieve foreign policy goals not necessarily through forceful means, but through attractiveness.
Marc Laverne, an international relations expert at the University of Tours in France, said: "Shortly after the American invasion of Kuwait, Qatar asked itself: Who can prevent them from attacking us in the future? Not our army, not the oil tankers, not the technology. Only Western public opinion. Since then Qatar began to develop a whole system of 'pillars', all of which are related to soft power - mainly in the worlds of culture and sports... Until about 15 years ago, Qatar did not exist in international awareness. But now, with the World Cup and Paris Saint-Germain, it is at the center of the world ".
And there is a close connection between the World Cup and Paris Saint-Germain, the football team that represents the City of Lights, a connection that involves billions of dollars and politics at the highest level.
We will always have Paris
The choice of Qatar as the host of the World Cup surprised the whole world, especially when it won the vote held in 2010 over the USA, whose proposal was superior in all parameters. Since then, quite a few investigations have been published that indicated huge bribe payments to some of the 22 members of the FIFA Executive Committee "A, those who participated in the fateful vote.
But what is equally significant was what happened a year after Qatar won the hosting of the World Cup.
QSI, its investment fund, bought Paris Saint-Germain.
From that moment on, the medium-sized team, which, among other things, lost a few years earlier to Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Tel Aviv, became one of the richest and best in the world.
Neymar, Messi and Mbappe, photo: Reuters
With the help of the hundreds of millions of dollars poured in from Qatar, Passage has acquired some of the best footballers over the years.
In fact, the two most expensive transfers in the history of world football were made by her: Neymar was purchased from Barcelona for 222 million euros and Kylian Mbappe, the French prodigy, was purchased from Monaco for 180 million.
And unlike the World Cup, a one-time event that will last four weeks - PSG is not going anywhere.
vice versa.
A year and a half ago, Leo Messi, perhaps the greatest footballer of all time, also joined the team, to further glorify the name of PSG - and the name of Qatar.
A central figure in these dramatic events is Nicolas Sarkozy, who served as the president of France between 2007 and 2012.
Sarkozy, a die-hard PSG fan, was the key man in the relationship between Qatar and France.
He brokered arms deals that included the sale of 36 Dassault Rafale fighter jets to Qatar and several A330 MRTT refueling aircraft.
The Qataris, for their part, promised Sarkozy huge investments in France, which included not only the purchase of PSG, but also the purchase of the broadcast rights of the French league by the beIN Sports network, which belongs to the Qatari television concern Al Jazeera.
By the way, the chairman of beIN Sports is Nasser Al-Khalaifi, probably the most famous Qatari in the world, who, surprisingly, also serves as the president of Paris Saint-Germain.
Sepp Blatter, who was the president of FIFA at that time, told not long ago in an interview with the Swiss newspaper "Tags-Enziger" about what happened then behind the scenes. Blatter supported the USA's candidacy to host the 2022 World Cup, and according to him, those who made sure Qatar won were Sarkozy And Michel Platini, the French star of the past, who then served as the president of UEFA, the European football confederation.
"Thanks to the four votes of Platini and the three other UEFA representatives, the World Cup went to Qatar and not to the USA. That's the truth," he said.
The result in the vote, by the way, was 8:14.
"Platini told me that he was invited to the Elysee Palace when Sarkozy hosted the crown prince of Qatar, nine days before the vote. Sarkozy told Platini: 'Look what you and your friends from UEFA can do so that the World Cup comes to Qatar.'
Platini told me: 'Sp, what would you do if your president asked you for something?'
I answered him that this could not have happened with me, because Switzerland does not have a president."
The celebration begins, photo: AFP
Platini was questioned on the issue and claimed that his vote was not influenced by Sarkozy's request.
But in an interview with "The Guardian" in 2013, he admitted: "I knew then that Sarkozy wanted the Qataris to purchase PSG."
But of course it wasn't enough for the Qataris.
They also wanted to whitewash the dubious choice, and for that they recruited some of the most famous names in world football.
They came to Doha with respect, took pictures with the Emir and said that the small Muslim country is the perfect place to host the World Cup.
The first of them was Zinedine Zidane, the hero of France's victory in 1998.
Rumors spoke of a payment of 10 million dollars or more, but "Zizou" denied, saying that it was a much smaller amount. Later, Alex Ferguson, Ronald de Boer and Pep Guardiola also joined the choir.
The last one was the English superstar David Beckham, who was appointed "Ambassador of the World Cup" for a modest sum of 10 million pounds. The criticism in Britain against Beckham, for having "sold himself" to the dictatorial regime of Doha, was enormous.
Apart from the desire to promote her image throughout The world, Qatar has another interest, no less important, which is the internal struggle in the Arab world, and especially among the rich Gulf countries.
The purchase of PSG happened in 2011, three years after the Emir of Abu Dhabi, through his investment fund, purchased Manchester City.
In just a few years, and with a huge investment in purchasing players, Manchester City became the top team in the English Premier League, the best league in the world.
Who has a bigger one?
And so the internal competition between the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi and Dubai) and Qatar moved from the Persian Gulf to Western Europe.
Manchester City and PSG are the two richest football clubs in the world, each of them purchased players for more than a billion euros in the last decade.
The irony is that even though City and PSG dominate their respective leagues, they have yet to win the most important title, the Champions League.
Which means, perhaps, that money is not everything in football...
Last summer Mbappe's contract at PSG ended, and he was supposed to move to Real Madrid.
Everything was already ready for the big move, when at the last minute the French star called the president of Real, Florentino Perez, and informed him that he was staying in Paris.
Recently Saudi Arabia entered the sporting "arms race", unwilling to be left behind.
The Saudis found it difficult to accept the fact that neighboring countries, very small in territory and population, such as Qatar and the Emirates, have become a household name in world sports
The whole world was left speechless.
The move seems patently illogical.
But little by little it became clear what happened behind the scenes.
It turns out that Mbappe was under heavy pressure to change his decision to move to Real, and that the pressure came mainly from Doha.
The emir of Qatar did everything for the biggest star of world football to come to the World Cup while still a PSG player.
He invited the actor's mother to him for a personal meeting, and activated French President Emmanuel Macron to convince Killian to stay.
And here, as always, a lot of money is involved.
Mbappe's new contract at PSG guarantees him a salary of 60 million dollars per year, plus about 100 million dollars as a signing fee.
Another 18 million dollars he earns from his share in PSG's marketing ventures, and in total Mbappe will earn about 256 million dollars in his two additional years with the team.
For about a quarter of a billion dollars, the Qataris made the 24-year-old Mbappe the highest-earning footballer in the world, all so that he would be "theirs" during the World Cup.
It is likely that in the summer of 2024 Mbappe will no longer be in Paris, but that is less important.
Saudi Arabia recently entered this competition, not willing to be left behind.
The Saudis found it difficult to accept the fact that neighboring countries, very small in territory and population, such as Qatar and the Emirates, became a household name in world sports, and decided to join the race.
Last year the investment fund of Saudi Arabia bought Newcastle United, started pouring huge sums into the club from the north of England, and it won't be far today and Newcastle will also become one of the top teams in Europe.
At the same time, the Saudis intend to submit a proposal to host the 2030 World Cup in cooperation with Egypt and Greece.
Bites, not war
Although Qatar and the UAE are in the same region, they are bitter rivals.
The great tension between them began in the Arab Spring of 2011, when Qatar was portrayed as aiding extremist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Qatari Al-Jazeera channel broadcast to the whole world, in Arabic and English, with the reports clearly biased towards a certain side.
In June 2017, four of the most important countries in the Arab world - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - announced the severing of diplomatic ties with Qatar.
Qatar's airspace and maritime space were blocked and Qatar's only land border crossing, with Saudi Arabia, was also blocked for passage.
In addition, students were expelled, joint businesses collapsed, families were broken up, and the Qataris were prevented from making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Madinah, which are in Saudi Arabia.
The anger of the Arab countries was against Qatar's financial support for terrorist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas, which pose a real threat to the regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Yemen.
With the mediation of the US (whose largest military base in the Middle East is in Qatar) the conflict ended after about three and a half years. Diplomatic relations were renewed, the air embargo and the naval embargo were lifted - but relations remained shaky.
Mustafa Qadri, one of the senior commentators of the Middle East, said at the time: "Qatar and the United Arab Emirates cannot really go to war against each other, but rather try and sting each other and move the arena of battle to football."
The World Cup will be held under a flood of criticism and protests in the Western world, and it is possible that here and there we will also see protests from fans and players in Qatar itself.
But as far as the Qataris are concerned, they have already won.
All attempts to prevent them from hosting the World Cup have failed, no team is boycotting the tournament and no player has announced that he will not attend.
And when the first kick is kicked on Sunday evening, the world will forget about everything and enter the football madness, as it does every four years.
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