Geopolitics and football: Neymar moving to PSG and Qatar’s soft power strategy
Early information by journalist Marcelo Bechler on July 18 was confirmed in the first week of August. Neymar will move from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). The transfer of the Brazilian star will be the most expensive in the history of world football: astonishing € 222 million (value of the buyout clause). It is more than twice the € 105 million that Manchester United paid to Juventus for Paul Pogba. Money, however, is not a problem for the French club since it was acquired in 2011 by Qatar Sports Investments, a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority. Neymar’s hiring by PSG goes far beyond the limits of the four lines. This is a political declaration of Qatar, which reaffirms its purposes of international affirmation through sport as a soft power tool.
Throughout the 20th century, sport, as a cultural phenomenon and mass spectacle that it represents, has consolidated itself as a manifestation of an international dimension. Eric Hobsbawm states that it was in the period between the two great World Wars that sport became “an expression of national struggle, with sportsmen representing their states or nations, fundamental expressions of their imagined communities.” Therefore, it is impossible to dissociate the history of modern sport from elements such as national pride, international prestige and diplomacy. In the context of international competition, elite sport has the capacity to reaffirm national identity, at the same time as it can be used as a tool to promote the country’s image — both in the search for international acceptance and affirmation, and in the establishment of International relations: the so-called soft power.
Soft power is a concept introduced by Joseph Nye who, in describing power relations, defined that “power is the ability to influence other people to achieve the desired results, which can be done through coercion, payment or attraction.” In contrast to “hard power”, which would be characterized by coercion (military force) or payment (economic force), there would be soft power. “A country can get the results it desires in international politics because other countries — admiring its values, emulating its example and aspiring to its level of prosperity — will want to follow it,” Nye said.
Qatar is an emirate. That is, it is an absolutist and hereditary monarchy ruled by an Emir. Ever since its declaration of independence from the United Kingdom in 1971, Qatar used sports as an element of national identity construction. Also in 1971, Muhammad Ali participated in a exhibition fight in Doha, the capital of the emirate. In 1973, Santos with Pelé played a friendly with Al-Ahli SC, the oldest club in the country. But it was through the creation of the Qatar Olympic Committee in 1979 and its recognition by the International Olympic Committee in 1980 that the country saw its image as an independent nation strengthened.
In 2008, the emirate launched Qatar National Vision 2030, a strategic plan of the country to change its image in the international context (quite associated with terrorism, with suspicions of financing terrorist groups like Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood) and, from the construction of this new image, the search for establishing itself as a reference for modernity in its region and for competitiveness in the global market. The National Vision 2030 approach includes foreign policy such as mediation and conflict resolution; the creation of a worldwide reference television network — Al Jazeera (and its subsidiary beIN Sports); a world-class airline (Qatar Airways) and an airport serving as a crossing point between continents. It is in this broader strategy of soft power that Qatar sports policies are inserted.
According to Richard Giulianotti “sports mega events can be considered one of the most powerful contemporary manifestations of globalization”. In economic terms, Giulianotti alludes to the billionaire figures involved in these tournaments and the possibility of whoever hosts the event to “sell” itself, not to mention the exposure to billions of people across the globe. Finally, the political aspect, since “these events attract politicians from all over the world, particularly in the opening ceremonies,” emphasizes Giulianotti. For this reason, the organization of sporting mega events can serve as an instrument of ‘soft power’.
Not surprisingly, Qatar has hosted the Asian Games (2006), 2015 Men’s Handball World Championships, hosts the Qatar Open Golf Masters, the ATP and WTA Tennis Championships, and the Doha stage of the MotoGP World Championships and in 2019 Doha will be stage the 2019 IAAF World Championships in Athletics. The culmination of this strategy of international persuasion and the promotion of a new image of the country vis-à-vis the international community is, of course, the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which has definitely put the emirate in the spotlight.
The exercise of soft power through sports does not only occur in the organization of sporting events. It is possible to combine soft power mechanisms with marketing techniques to create a brand of a nation, and thus change international public opinion: “nation branding”. And that is what Qatar has done. First, through the Qatar Foundation which paid €170 million to become the first commercial sponsorship of history in Barcelona shirt (a brand that was later replaced by Qatar Airways, a state-owned company owned entirely by the Qatar Sovereign Fund).
In 2011, Qatar Investment Authority, through Qatar Sports Investments, bought PSG, with the intention of transforming the Parisian club into a reference brand in the global market. Qatar Sports Investments was established in 2005 by Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, who is currently the Emir of Qatar, succeeding his father, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani (who rose to power after a coup d’etat over his progenitor , Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani).
Since the acquisition by the cataris, PSG has spent more than €720 million on transfers (not counting the €222 million for Neymar). According to Sporting Intelligence report (which analyzed not only football championships but also the NFL, NBA, MLB, Indian cricket league, among others), thanks to PSG in the 2016/17 season the French Ligue 1 was the sports league with greater inequality in the ratio between the club with the highest wage budget and the lowest: 21.5: 1. The difference between the average annual salary of a player of the PSG’s first team for a player of the first team of the new champion Monaco was €3.3 million.
PSG, who had not won Ligue 1 since 1994 (and only had two national titles in their history), won the national championship four times in a row between 2013 and 2016. In 2017, they lost the title to Monaco. But while domestic success was won with great ease, the club failed to stand on top of European football, making its brand not established as a world reference.
Still in the field of soft power, who does not remember the visit of Sheikh bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani to the city of Chapecó, Brazil, in December 2016? During his visit to the interior of the state of Santa Catarina, Sheikh Al Thani invited the Under-17 Chapecoense team to play a tournament in Qatar and made available the Aspire Academy, which is a reference centre for the training of athletes (as well as an instrument of persuasion, with the promotion of activities that attract athletes from all over the world), for the young players of Chapecoense.
Neymar: a sports, financial and political move
Richard Giulianotti, however, draws attention to the risk of what he defined as soft disempowerment. According to the author, soft disempowerment occurs when “the attempt to obtain ‘soft power’ backfires, influence and prestige are shaken rather than magnified.”
This is what has happened with Qatar, especially after winning the right to host the 2022 World Cup. The accusations of buying votes of members of the FIFA Committee that elected the emirate as the host of the World Cup; accusations of human rights violations; bad conditions of work in the construction of projects related to the World Cup (including conditions analogous to modern slavery); the high temperatures in the country during the period in which the World Cup traditionally happens, which forced the change of dates, damaging the world football calendar, in particular of the European clubs (main suppliers of athletes for the event), etc.
On top of all this, Qatar has not been able to get rid of allegations of funding Islamic extremist groups. It was under this allegation that its neighbors Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain suspended diplomatic relations with Qatar in June of this year.
And it is precisely in the midst of this diplomatic conflict that the country sees itself, more than ever, in the need to work to promote a new image of itself. A “nation branding” construction that is associated with modernity, security, development, competitiveness and peace. It is in this geopolitical context that hiring Neymar is inserted. Indeed, it is not by chance that PSG intends to appeal to Qatari companies to pay for the striker and thus try to get rid of any punishment for breaking UEFA’s financial fair play.
At the same time it would represent a huge qualitative increase in sports level and financial enhancement of the PSG brand (which has in winning the Champions League the great sporting goal to strengthen its image in the global market and finally become a club/product of international reference), Neymar would serve as a “poster boy” to Qatar’s grand strategic plan to promote the country’s reinvigorated brand in the international geopolitical, commercial, and financial landscape.
While its neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia, try to tarnish its image before the world, Qatar makes a strong statement with Neymar moving to PSG. The country seeks (re)affirmation on the world stage, while sending a message to its neighbors. Football, more than ever, serves as a political tool and soft power tool.
