Newcastle vs PSG is a proxy for Gulf states' wider battle for supremacy
Eddie Howe was not asked for his thoughts on the New Arab Cold War before Newcastle host Paris Saint-Germain at St James’ Park.
He would not have answered anyway because, as he has reminded everyone over and over since taking over the club, there is no time for considered thoughts on anything other than football. Or discussions about an old tree being chopped down.
Yet the Toon’s first home game in Europe’s premier competition is intrinsically linked to a diplomatic tension between two states that are integral to how the world will be shaped in the coming decades.
No doubt Howe will be too busy plotting a way to stop Kylian Mbappe or find a route past Gianluigi Donnarumma but should he have a spare few minutes before kick off here is a helpful primer of what makes the game, a meeting between the Saudi-owned Newcastle and Qatar-run PSG, a proxy for a wider diplomatic rivalry.
The history
Qatar did not declare full independence from British rule until 1971. At that point they were way behind Saudi Arabia and, as the American academic Jim Krane told Bloomberg during the crisis in 2017, "Qatar used to be a kind of Saudi vassal state, but it used the autonomy that its gas wealth created to carve out an independent role for itself.”
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When Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani ousted his father as Emir of Qatar in 1995, the smaller state became a disrupter. There had been previous issues - Qatar opened diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Saudis killed two soldiers near the border in 1991. But in the most simple terms Sheikh Al-Thani was desperate for Qatar to become autonomous and no longer viewed as an irrelevant little sibling of the more populous neighbours.
As Marc Lynch, a political scientist at George Washington University, told the New York Times : “From the late 1990s on, Qatari foreign policy is a combination of: ‘What can we do to get ourselves on the map?’ and ‘What can we do to annoy the Saudis?’”
On the flip side Saudis began to view Qatar’s friendly relationship with Iran, binded together over shared gas fields, as suspicious but the Al Thanis also aligned themselves with the United States.
Then came an economic boom facilitated by technological advances that made it easy to transport liquefied gas. From the late 90s Qatar and Saudi witnessed their respective economies grow at a stratospheric rate.
Sporting interests
Except relying on one source of huge wealth was flagged as long-term problematic by both states who set about diversifying their economies as both protection and an opportunity to grow.
Inevitably that has involved sport - on top of investments in tech, historical assets in a number of western countries and hosts worldwide-known events.
Qatar have led the way in that regard - encapsulated by last year’s World Cup - but they were also quicker to the draw when it came to the club game, taking over PSG in 2011.
But the Saudis (whose football pedigree is far clearer) are catching up fast and, in addition to Newcastle, their domestic Pro League endeavours have rocked the game in the past 12 months. That progress will not stop and the game’s authorities appear powerless to get in the way despite many protesting against future potential conflicts of interest and why it is problematic for clubs to be controlled by states linked to grave human rights issues.
Kylian Mbappe will try to win the Champions League for PSG this season (Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)Human rights issues
Well we couldn’t not mention it. Saudi, according to Amnesty International, is “implicated in war crimes and other serious violations of international law”. Qatar, the same NGO said in its most recent annual report, has “continued to curtail freedom of expression, using abusive laws to stifle critical voices.”
Both countries continue to discriminate against women and migrants, while LGBT+ people face the most severe of punishments. Critics are punishable by long jail sentences or, more commonly in Saudi, the death penalty.
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Gulf blockade
To understand the current state of the tension between the states, one must look at the tension from 2017 when Qatar faced a blockade from Saudi, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt. Trade restrictions were imposed, Qatari planes were banned from entering the airspace of those states and diplomatic relations were ceased.
At its crux the coalition of states accused Qatar of helping to fund terrorism and it led to a host of demands that included weakening ties to Iran.
It led to media bans and a long dispute that placed the Saudi takeover of Newcastle into jeopardy linked to the streaming service beoutQ.
The blockade continued until January 2021 when a resolution was brokered at a summit - and reports suggest the election of Joe Biden in the United States was vital.
The future
Both countries are hellbent on sinking their tentacles deeper and deeper into western economies as ways to increase both influence and wealth. They stem from that original need to diversify their economies from oil.
And, as fans of Newcastle are keen to point out when their club is criticised, the Saudis have already snapped up shares in corporate giants such as Uber, Disney and EA Sports.
Qatar, meanwhile, has been described as owning half of London’s landmarks, including the Shard, Harrod’s and large portions of the resident facilities at the Olympic Park. And no one knows if Sheikh Jassim, a son of a former prime minister, will become the next owner of Manchester United - throwing another curveball into the footballing dynamic.
So when 22 footballers line up against each other and 50,000 fevered supporters urge their team to victory it must not be viewed without this additional context. That cliche about football being more than a game has never been more prescient. But not for reasons any of us should be celebrating.
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