Sounds like a lot of money for an ordinary team in an ordinary league? Not really when you are sitting on more than $300 billion in assets — it’s a lunch.
The strategy was simple — spend heavily to make Paris St. Germain a European giant, to compete with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester United. And they’re getting there. PSG came within a few seconds of knocking Barcelona out of the Champions’ League last year — until Neymar himself scored twice. Perhaps that was the moment that PSG decided Neymar must be theirs. And perhaps that was the moment Neymar decided he deserved to be the center of attention — to step out of the shadow of Lionel Messi.
In a way, Qatar has mimicked what the United Arab Emirates did. The UAE marketed the “Emirates” by building a global airline, grafting the brand onto football clubs, investing heavily in promoting Dubai as a tourist destination and buying into blue-chip corporations.
But Qatar has done so at warp speed, just as it has expanded its footprint across the Middle East with a swashbuckling independence. That boldness has been on show since the birth of the Al Jazeera television network in 1996, but more dramatically in Qatar’s intervention (with weapons and cash) in Libya and Syria, and its support for the reconstruction of Gaza.
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