Soccer’s Geopolitics Loses Energy as Champions League Final Nears
Today’s guest columnist is professor Simon Chadwick of the Emlyon Business School in Paris.
There is an old cliché that a week in soccer is a long time, which means that a whole season can sometimes seem like an eternity. Indeed, since Albania’s Prishtina beat Andorra’s Inter Club d’Escaldes in last June’s UEFA Champions League (UCL) preliminary round qualifying final, a lot has happened to the competition, much of it influenced by off-field geopolitics.
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This season’s UCL final is almost upon us, with Liverpool of the English Premier League set to play Spanish LaLiga club Real Madrid in what, on the face of it, might seem like a conventional concluding game. The two clubs are stalwarts of the European game—indeed, they played each other in the 2018 Champions League Final (a game the Spanish club won).
However, the journey to this season’s tournament has been anything but conventional.
Shortly after Prishtina’s match with Inter Club d’Escaldes, the French club Paris Saint Germain stunned world football by signing Argentinian legend Lionel Messi from FC Barcelona of Spain. Notwithstanding Barca’s financial problems, the transfer was a statement of intent from PSG’s Qatari owners that they wanted to win the competition in 2022.
This is a big year for the small Gulf state, which is set to host the FIFA World Cup. There is a belief in Qatar that the country deserves the best and must be the best, something that signing Messi, winning the Champions League and successfully staging football’s biggest national team tournament were supposed to validate.
However, despite the huge revenues that government in Doha derives from its vast reserves of natural gas, money doesn’t necessarily buy you soccer success. PSG exited the tournament at the last-16 stage, defeated by Real Madrid. The same fate awaited European football’s other oil- and gas-powered behemoth, Manchester City; the Abu Dhabi-owned Premiership team lost its semifinal to Spain’s biggest club, as well.
Ironically, Real’s journey this season began ignominiously when, last September, it lost to the supposed Moldovan minnows Sheriff Tiraspol. At the time, some observers argued that it was the biggest shock in Champions League history. Closer scrutiny of the Moldovan club nevertheless revealed something more sinister, which served as a portent of what was to come several months later.
Tiraspol is the “capital” city of the breakaway state Transnistria, located in the east of Moldova. This is a region controlled by former Russian KGB agents, who also own and control Sheriff Tiraspol. They are strongly pro-Kremlin and have an aspiration to reunite Transnistria with Putin’s Russia. Furthermore, they are engaged with Russian state-owned gas supplier Gazprom and have been playing the same energy politics that have afflicted other countries, including Ukraine.
Adding further irony to this situation, among Real and Sheriff’s UCL group stage opponents was Shakhtar Donetsk of Ukraine. Formerly the Donbas region’s preeminent team, Shakhtar has been forced to play matches during recent years in Kyiv and Lviv (in the west of Ukraine) due to the political instabilities caused by Russian-backed separatist attacks in the country’s east.
Perhaps this should have served as a warning to the likes of UEFA about the geopolitical risks associated with staging matches or signing sponsorship deals with countries, cities and organizations from geopolitically sensitive territories. Instead, European football’s governing body agreed to a raft of sponsorships and renewals with Gazprom as recently as last year. Alongside Qatar, Russia is one of the world’s biggest producers of liquefied natural gas, and its coffers are awash with cash, a proportion of which the corporation has willingly spent on soccer.
This has helped UEFA to significantly grow its revenues, while at the same time helping the Russian energy giant to legitimize its activities, though some critics have characterized this as state-sponsored sport washing. Indeed, during his presidency, Donald Trump had started to call out Gazprom’s growing influence on European energy markets and the dependence of countries such as Germany on Russian gas.
It is finally now evident that Gazprom’s sponsorship of the Champions League was never a normal deal, though it was proving to be a beneficial one for the corporation. This season’s UEFA Champions League Final was originally scheduled to take place in Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Putin’s hometown and site of Gazprom headquarters. The arena in which the match was due to take place is owned by Gazprom, as is Zenit, the club that normally plays there.
If European football had appropriately engaged in strategic foresight, the consequences of Russia invading Ukraine may not have been so dramatic. Nevertheless, within days of the first missiles being launched by Putin’s forces in February, UEFA switched the Champions League Final to Paris and then terminated its near 10-year sponsorship deal with Gazprom.
The Stade de France, where the match is going to be staged, will therefore be a sanitized, Russia-free environment, where symbols of support for Ukraine will presumably be displayed and “safe,“ and Western-owned clubs and sponsors will be strongly evident. There’s something decidedly old-school about fan-owned Real Madrid facing Fenway Sports Group’s Liverpool, especially after last season’s gas-fueled final involving Chelsea and Manchester City.
Before anyone starts rejoicing at the normalization of European football, however, it is worth remembering that we are a year removed from the Super League debacle, of which both Liverpool and Real Madrid were part. Since then, Real Madrid has won the Spanish Super Cup, a game staged in Saudi Arabia, and rumors abound about commercial deals the Spanish club is keen to sign with the oil- and gas-rich state. The club’s president also continues to press for the Super League’s creation.
For the time being, Russia appears to have lost its energy when it comes to influencing European football. At the same time, although a lot has happened since Prishtina beat Inter Club d’Escaldes, the turbulent world of UEFA’s Champions League has not yet achieved a new normal or a position of stability. Indeed, with the competition currently in the process of restructuring, Real Madrid versus Liverpool constitutes nothing more than a brief opportunity to catch our breath amid the ongoing, energetic geopolitics of soccer.
Chadwick is the director of Emlyon Business School’s Centre for Eurasian Sport Industry.
