PARIS — Despite his inexhaustible fortune, did Sheikh Tamin Al-Thani ever think he would be able to acquire such a player to add to his sporting showcase? Ten years after buying Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG), the Emir of Qatar can now see the Argentine prodigy Lionel Messi, the best footballer of (at least) this century, don the jersey of the French capital’s club.
On Tuesday, after five days of negotiations, the longtime FC Barcelona star agreed to play for the team coached by his compatriot Mauricio Pochettino: he signed for two seasons, with an additional year as an option (for an annual salary of over 30 million euros, excluding bonuses).
The 34-year-old striker, who left Barcelona at the end of his contract for budgetary reasons, landed at Le Bourget airport to a standing ovation from several hundred supporters. During a theatrical farewell to the supporters of Barcelona (the ‘socios blaugrana’) on Sunday, he was initially inconsolable, but quickly dried his tears.
Ici, c’est Paris (This, is Paris) was written on his white T-shirt, chosen for the momentous arrival. The six-time Ballon d’Or winner made a detour to the Parc des Princes, the PSG stadium, to pose with his new jersey and then greet the Parisian fans, before settling in at the Royal Monceau Hotel for the official welcoming press conference.
Could the directors of the Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) fund have celebrated their decade at the head of PSG better than by recruiting the four-time Champions League winner and Barcelona’s all-time top scorer (672 goals in 778 games)?
Calling it a “planetary event,” the president of the Professional Football League (LFP), Vincent Labrune, emphasized that the deal was the “fruit of the strategy of the PSG management.” In this case, the Argentine, who has only played with one club since his arrival at the Barcelona training center at the age of 13, becomes the new shiny object for the oil emirate on the chessboard of sports diplomacy.
PSG is building a brand. Soccer is secondary in all this.
The transaction crowns a decade of pharaonic investments made by Tamin Al-Thani to build a brand whose notoriety is supposed to consolidate the image of Qatar across the globe. “The stages of Zlatan Ibrahimovic (2012), David Beckham (2013), Neymar (2017) and now Messi have been essential and decisive in enabling the club to become a major global franchise,” says Alain Cayzac, former president of PSG (2006-2008) under the American group Colony Capital, who has remained close to the Qataris. “We send a signal when we want this kind of player to come to Paris.”
“PSG is building a brand, not a club,” laughs a team insider, familiar with the storytelling built by QSI. “Soccer is secondary in all of this, it is a by-product.”
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Lionel Messi playing soccer while he was still a member of the Barcelona team — Mike Egerton/PA Wire via ZUMA Press
Messi is a whole different level from a marketing point of view, and the Emirates is going all-in to arrive in style at the World Cup, which will be held in Qatar in November and December 2022.
From a sporting point of view, Messi’s recruitment is supposed to enable the club to win the Champions League before the World Cup. And to achieve this goal before Manchester City, the other new rich of the continent, owned by Sheikh Mansour of Adu Dhabi since 2008 and tormentor of PSG during the last European campaigns — defeat in the quarterfinals in 2016 and in the semis in May 2021.
The planets are aligned.
For the president of Olympique Lyonnais, Jean-Michel Aulas, “the planets are aligned”: “QSI wanted to give itself the means to reach the top, politically and athletically, the year of the World Cup.” And that competition is one that Lionel Messi dreams of finally winning with his national team.
Winning the French Ligue 1 title is a must now, after the recruitment of Messi and other stars at the end of their contracts, such as former Real Madrid captain Sergio Ramos of Spain, AC Milan’s Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and Liverpool’s Dutch midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum.
In the midst of the economic crisis caused by Covid-19 and the end of the conflict surrounding the aborted Super League project, which pitted the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) against a number of secessionist clubs (Juventus Turin, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid) in April, the arrival of Messi in Paris illustrates the rise in power of PSG and its influential president, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, on the continental scene.
“The investor States [Qatar, United Arab Emirates] have managed to take a form of power on the sporting and political levels,” says Aulas. These last two terrible years have given them the means to take the strategy to the logical end.”
As the embodiment of Barcelona for more than two decades, doesn’t Messi risk denting his legend as loyal team player? “The club and its vision are perfectly in line with my ambitions,” said the Argentine, who has never hidden his desire to leave Europe one day to finish his career in the United States.
“Messi, in Barcelona, is an almost authentic work. In Paris, he becomes a commodity,” says another source familiar with the PSG’s inner workings. He joins a club that is “més que un club” [more than a club, Barcelona’s motto].” The showcase of a state, whose ambition, well beyond soccer, seems insatiable.
