S
o the club that includes
the state-owned airline of a
human-rights-abusing emirate
as a sponsor beat the club
owned by that emirate. Football breathed
a sigh of relief: the sacred cup had held
back the fullest tide of sportswashing for
one more season. Yet Bayern Munich’s
winner was scored by a player who was
convicted of assaulting the mother of his
child in 2017. The European game’s finale
was an unedifying spectacle all-round.
Let nobody be under any illusion
what the 2020 Champions League final
represented, or why Qatar Airways was
so keen to promote it as the “Qlassico”.
This was the result of a meeting held a
decade ago at the Elysee Palace in Paris
between the French president Nicolas
Sarkozy, Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad
Al Thani of Qatar, Michel Platini and the
owners of Paris Saint-Germain. Ten days
later, Platini voted for Qatar to host the
2022 World Cup. Within a year, Paris
Saint-Germain, who had been strugglingfinancially, were bought by Qatari Sports
Investments, an arm of the emirate’s
sovereign wealth fund and soon the
French league was buoyed by a
broadcast rights deal with the
Qatar-basedbeIN Sports.
Forget thekafalasystem of visa
sponsorship, forget the appalling
conditions in which migrant workers
labour, forget the restrictions on women,
forget the fact that homosexuality is still
illegal; look at the sparkly football.
For most of the past decade, PSG’s
football has been a vaguely comicYet stain of sportswashing
hangs over showpiece final
morality tale. Domestic silverware has
stacked up yet brought increasingly little
satisfaction. There had never been a
domestic treble in France until six years
ago; since then there have been four.
What was needed was a Champions
League to finally set the seal on the
project. But it’s hard to compete with
Europe’s other super-clubs when you
are never seriously challenged at home.
Under Thomas Tuchel, PSG
have improved significantly. A final
represents their best Champions League
performance, but in the end, they were
undone by a Bayern side that had greater
depth and pressed better. Thomas Muller,
notably, regained possession more than
the PSG front three put together, for all
that Neymar has been more disciplined
with regard to his defensive
responsibilities than ever before.
It may have been a measure enforced
by necessity, but the final fortnight –
even without fans – was a success. There
was the same sense of momentum, of aBAYERN EDGE OUT PSG
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE REVIEW
2020 CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINALSave...Mbappe had
PSG’s best chance