Europe's hurt over winter World Cup disruption is nothing but grand hypocrisy
Tom Adams says it is inconsistent for European giants to take huge amounts of Middle Eastern sponsorship then complain about disruption when a World Cup is held there.
With the perfect timing of a Cesc Fabregas through-ball, it was revealed in a study on Monday evening that Middle East investment was “swelling the coffers of Europe's top football clubs whose income from shirt sponsorship has soared to over £503.73 million this season - 20 percent up on 2013-14.”
The most eye-catching figure
from the report from analysts Repucom was that companies from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar had invested around €160m (£118m) in European shirt sponsorship this season alone, amounting to almost a quarter of the total contribution from across the globe, including Europe itself.
Meanwhile, tonight, arguably the most eagerly awaited of the Champions League last-16 matches sees
Manchester City, sponsored by Etihad Airways, taking on Barcelona, sponsored by Qatar Airways, at the Etihad Stadium, just a short stroll from the Etihad Campus.
The Middle East is a huge player in European football, from owners at Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, through influence at clubs like Barcelona and via coaches like Pep Guardiola, a long-term advocate of Qatar. It might not please traditionalists, but it is nevertheless a fact of the modern game, a duality perhaps best demonstrated in Florentino Perez’s accidental announcement recently that after Madrid signed an agreement with the International Petroleum Investment Company, the rebuilt Bernabeu would be renamed.
“We’ll call it Ipic Bernabeu or whatever they want,” said Perez in front of a hidden camera, laying bare the influence that money and sponsorship will buy you in football. According to AS, Madrid’s remodelled ground will be called the Abu Dhabi Bernabeu, a name that would at the very least wreak havoc when put into Google Maps.
Yet while European clubs so enthusiastically embrace the money flowing in from the Middle East, their attitude sours at the prospect of actual proper football being exported to the region at a time inconvenient to them. The most vociferous opponents to Tuesday's recommendation from FIFA’s taskforce that the 2022 World Cup must be switched from summer to winter were European.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Bayern Munich chief executive and, more importantly, chairman of the European Club Association, had this to say: "European clubs and leagues cannot be expected to bear the costs for such rescheduling. We expect the clubs to be compensated."
Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, apparently blind to the irony of that organisation complaining about inconvenient fixture changes, added: "Yes, very disappointed that's the word, on behalf of the all the European leagues and particularly the European clubs who provide most of the players for this World Cup. The idea that we turned up today, it was a pretty short meeting, to be told that it is going to happen in November and December is very disappointing.
“We had a consistent position all along and for the integrity of the Football League to have to stop for six or seven weeks is less than ideal. FIFA keep their international dates, they keep their World Cup intact, even UEFA, who, I think, let us down a little bit, clearly pushed this... so their Champions League can start and carry on again, just like it always does."
The poor, downtrodden Premier League, being ordered around like that. Not getting their own way. Having to change their schedule for the first time ever. It's a scandal. What would soften the blow? A £5bn TV deal?
The reaction from the big clubs and leagues paints a picture of a Europe happy to take Middle Eastern money whern it suits them, but not take instruction in return. It is not a symbiotic relationship, but instead symptomatic of the power dynamic in football which heavily favours Europe already.
No one is pretending that a winter World Cup will not cause huge disruption for the big European leagues, but the whole of football already exists to enrich them. Giant TV revenues pour into their coffers from all corners of the globe, the Asian market props up their burgeoning commercial income and playing talent moves, as if by osmosis, from Africa and South America in a constant stream that fundamentally weakens the country which has actually produced the players.
Leagues across the world suffer from the fact that local fans are more interested in what happens in the England than their own doorstep. The Premier League and the European Club Association sit at the very apex of football’s pyramid, where money, unlike water, flows uphill. Very quickly. Eroding the landscape in its wake.
Even more ludicrous than these winges over compensation, it has been suggested that
the Qatar World Cup could come too close to Christmas. If anything exemplifies football’s heavy Euro-centric bias, it is this. Not everyone in the world celebrates Christmas, you know, even if it’s important for the Premier League brand.
While Europe wrings its hands over scheduling problems for its leagues,
few have actually cottoned on to the fact that the more clear and present danger from a November/December World Cup in 2022 is towards the African Cup of Nations which is currently due to be held the very next month in Guinea.
There are many reasons why playing a World Cup in Qatar is a horrid idea. They have been so well-rehearsed that they do not need repeating here. It is enough to restate the figure of a predicted 4,000 migrant worker deaths which could occur as infrastructure is built. But Christmas being disrupted, and subsequent impositions on the Premier League, are not among them.
It is perhaps worth noting at this point that none of Europe's biggest stakeholders are making the argument that a Qatar World Cup is unsupportable on moral or ethical grounds. That does not come into the equation. European football is capitalism writ large and profit is the only issue worth making a noise about.
So when the whole football eco-system is constructed to favour Europe's giants anyway, when every single World Cup so far has conformed to their calendar and when Middle Eastern money has been so greedily ingested in recent years, it makes it hard to take seriously the complaints coming from the most powerful corridors of Europe on Tuesday.
