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Champions League final: a winner has already been determined

2020-08-23T10:16:21.225Z


The two finalists in the premier class, Paris Saint-Germain and FC Bayern Munich, are sponsored by Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani from Qatar. The sport is part of its corrupt policy of expansion.


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PSG owner Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani (archive photo)

Photo: 

Mohammed Dabbous / picture alliance / AA

The emirate of Qatar invites you to the final of the European Champions League on Sunday evening in the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon. The state airline Qatar Airways called the duel between Paris Saint-Germain and FC Bayern Munich as Qlassico .

A final between PSG, which is wholly owned by Qatar, and FC Bayern, whose so-called platinum partners have been Qatar Airways since 2018. The airline, called "Kafala Airways" by Bayern fans, took over the sponsorship agreement with Hamad International Airport in Doha, which has been running since 2016. A winner of this most important football game of the year has therefore been determined: Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, the 40-year-old Emir of Qatar.

Tamim the Glorious, he can be called in Qatar. The monarch, a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 2002, is of course expected in Lisbon. PSG is officially owned by Tamim's Oryx Qatar Sport Investments (QSI), a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Since the takeover in 2011, Qatar has pumped at least 1.5 billion euros into the company and catapulted PSG into fifth place among the world's top-selling football clubs - right behind FC Bayern. Compared to other investments by the sovereign wealth fund QIA - at Volkswagen, Barclays, London Heathrow Airport or in real estate in New York - these are peanuts. But the advertising effect is huge. Sport, especially football, is a central element of the Qatar National Vision 2030 plan adopted in 2008 .

The superpower of world sport

Qatar's rise is incomparable. The tiny hereditary monarchy has developed into a global player thanks to the billions in natural gas. In the sports business, Qatar is even a superpower. The Champions League final is another milestone. The soccer World Cup will follow in two years, and has been overshadowed by corruption and human rights violations since it was awarded on December 2, 2010. But even this World Cup, for which Qatar has invested several hundred billion in huge infrastructure measures, should only be a milestone.

After that, Qatar is planning applications for the Summer Olympics in 2032, the Asian Games in 2030 and the Asian Cup in football in 2027. The Asian Games and the Asian Cup are each against the hostile big brother from Saudi Arabia.

Sunday will be particularly painful for the Saudis, who are now copying Qatar's path and are also making huge investments in sports projects. The Qatar final in Lisbon also annoys the sheikhs from the United Arab Emirates, who have been boycotting and isolating Qatar with the Saudis since June 2017. 

A direct consequence of this cataract crisis, which sometimes took on threatening traits, close to armed conflicts, were further football investments: PSG (more correctly said: Emir Tamim) signed Neymar, then Kylian Mbappé a few weeks later - for a total of 402 million euros.

Sport has often been described as an element of soft power politics. The term sportwashing has recently been used to refer to Qatar and other questionable upstarts .

The dictatorship sells itself as modern and trendy, as young and cosmopolitan. The diverse and often dubious investments in clubs, events, numerous world Olympic associations and many important officials are accompanied by huge propaganda measures. The tender for the PR contracts up to the 2022 World Cup is currently running.

Qatar has always funded the most expensive PR agencies, law firms, lobbyists (including high-ranking democratic politicians) and secret service investigators to flank its investments and to combat its reputation as a rogue sports state that ignores human rights with medieval legislation. Qatar has financed pseudo-scientific work, such as a so-called corruption study by the Paris Sorbonne, which was little more than propaganda and in which the real problem of world sport was not addressed: Qatar's corrupt policy of expansion. 

Through various institutions - especially the International Center for Sport Security  (ICSS) and the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) - Qatar is playing itself as a global leader in an abstruse good governance industry and infiltrating numerous political bodies in the European Union the United Nations, everywhere.

According to files from the Football Leaks , former Interpol officials for the ICSS carried out the covert espionage operation Hawk for several years - with the aim of hoisting officials from Qatar into high positions in world sport. According to this, data were stolen from the computers of high-ranking IOC member Sheikh Ahmad Al-Sabah (Kuwait) and his closest employees in the Olympic capital of Lausanne in 2015. As always, the ICSS has rejected such publications.

And Sheikh Ahmad, who should have taken action against the theft, is now sponsored by Emir Tamim and has found a second home in Doha.

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Tamim also sponsors bizarre anti-corruption prizes invented by its lobbyists and professional whitewashers. For example, the International Anti-Corruption Excellence Award named after him - the United Nations Office for the Fight against Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is a partner. Such generous and easily transparent offers are rarely turned down.

Ex-General Secretary and PSG boss charged

In mid-September, the long-standing FIFA Secretary General Jérôme Valcke and PSG President Nasser Al-Khelaifi will have to answer before the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona. Al-Khelaifi is said to have bribed Valcke when awarding television rights to football world championships. Both deny the allegations. In some other cases, Al-Khelaifi always got away with it. At the same time as the court hearing in Switzerland, the French special investigators are not giving up either.

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Nasser Al-Khelaifi heads PSG's business

Photo: Franck Fife / AFP

Al-Khelaifi, 46, a former professional tennis player, plays a central role in Qatar's sports policy. He enjoys the trust of the emir. He heads the business of PSG, QSI and the important BeIN Media Group , which in turn has spent billions on TV rights to soccer competitions and the Olympic Games. Despite all the scandals, Al-Khelaifi is still a member of the Executive Committee of the European Football Union (Uefa). At the court of his friend and boss Tamim, he was raised to the rank of minister. Officially without a business unit, his role is clearly defined: Portfolio Sport, based in Paris. 

In golf, sport is politics and politics is sport

As heir to the throne, Sheikh Tamim set the course for Qatar's policy of conquest. In 2002 he became the youngest ever IOC member. In 2003 an Extraordinary FIFA Congress was held in Doha and Tamim played host. In 2006 he was President of the Organizing Committee of the Asian Games. When applying for the 2022 World Cup, he stayed in the background, but was entrusted with sensitive assignments. His father Hamad and his mother, Sheikha Moza, took on the leading roles at the time - including Mohammed, one of his younger brothers.

For people like Tamim, the rules are flexible. And IOC President Thomas Bach, an avowed football fan and friend of FC Bayern President Herbert Hainer, is on friendly terms with the Al-Thanis.

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Long-time Adidas CEO and today's Bayern President Hainer has an opinion on Qatar. On the FC Bayern website he can be quoted as follows: "We want to make a contribution by building bridges and conveying values ​​between cultures. Not in the form of public pillory events, but in confidential talks with our partners."

Values, trust, building bridges - what people say when it comes to money. That Bayern fan who organized a panel discussion on Qatar at the beginning of this year and gave a keynote speech has now been banned from FC Bayern. Allegedly because of a protest poster against Monday games. Andreas Hüttl, the fan’s lawyer, says on the other hand that the ban on the Allianz Arena and the Grünwalder Stadium should silence a critic. The matter has been negotiated at the Munich District Court since this week.

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Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2020-08-23

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