In November 2010, Argentina and Brazil played a friendly in Qatar.
Lionel Messi -then only 23 but already a full-blown global football superstar and Ballon d’Or winner – and Neymar, 18 and a rapidly-rising global sensation, were poised on the pitch at the Doha’s Khalifa International Stadium.
Over a decade later, the incredible duo will now play alongside each other again but only this time for a Qatari-owned club, one year before Qatar stages the biggest sporting event ever in the Gulf to herald its arrival and precedence on the international football arena.
As we approach the bend leading to 2022, Paris Saint-Germain’s Nasser Al-Khelaifi and Lionel Messi’s shadows will certainly be looming long and auspicious next to the World Cup trophy glittering in the enchanting sunset in the principal stadium in Qatar.
At a cursory glance, Messi’s move to the Parc des Prince after leaving Barcelona looks to all intents and purposes to be the final piece in the newly-assembled jigsaw for Qatar’s showcase club in its unrelenting quest to win the prize it most covets — the Champions League. But in truth it extends way beyond that – all the way to November 2022, when Qatar will play the unimpeachable, gracious host to the FIFA World Cup.
So while Messi’s move to France has grabbed the spotlight for now, for once he is not the main event although tactically billed as such. The powers that be in Doha want 2022 to be all about Qatar and its new world order, and the Argentinian maestro has been finally enlisted to play his ambassadorial football part in their highly tactical game plan that has been supremely well-strategized, leaving no stones unturned.
Messi playing and lifting trophies for the club owned by Qatar is the biggest promotion the tiny, oil-rich state could’ve ever hoped for to spur their dreams into reality. One that the Qataris could very possibly have planned for with broad strokes way back in 2010 when Messi played in their country against Neymar but didn’t even actually dare believe would materialize a decade later, by sheer coincidence when the GOAT’s situation with his club of almost two decades fell foul of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules. The entire situation just played naturally, and so beautifully, into the Qatar emirate’s hands as Paris Saint-Germain were in absolutely the right place at the right precise time to offer Messi the new home he was desperately seeking to nurse his wounds in after the opprobrious exit from Camp Nou.
Although taking shape in the form of coincidental timing in 2021, Messi signing for PSG can actually be construed as something invariably inevitable, which can be traced all the way back to that 2010 Brazil-Argentine friendly, and, equally significant, to the start of Qatar’s sponsorship of Barca after winning the World Cup hosting bid a few weeks later.
Coincidence played no hand since then as it was noticeably none other than Pep Guardiola, Barca’s revolutionary coach and mentor of Messi, who became a Qatar 2022 ambassador. Strikingly, Barca’s midfield maestro Xavi Hernandez also decided to wind down his career in Qatar, and also became a World Cup ambassador and is the current head coach at Qatari club Al Sadd. And now in the grand coup de grace of all times Neymar and Messi have now been reunited in Paris Saint-Germain under the auspices of owner Qatar Sports Investments, the subsidiary of Qatar Investment Authority. Nothing coincidental, surely?
Linking up all the dots, the lineage of what just happened can be drawn all the way back to that point as there is unmistakable Barca DNA in all of this. There is a clearly a relationship between PSG and Qatar and also one between the Qataris and Barca.
It’s almost like a chronicle of a signing foretold a decade in advance, with a strange interplay between premeditative planning on the one hand and coincidence over the years in the other. And somehow, oddly but miraculously, it all worked out. There is something wonderfully serendipitous about all of this. The way things are unfolding now, Messi’s joining Paris Saint-Germain is a tangible contribution to not just Qatar’s footballing goals but also national development goals.
“There is a lot of messaging in all this,” reckoned James Dorsey, a researcher at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and author of ‘The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer’, even though he says the entire deal came out of the blue after Barca announced they could no longer afford Messi because of their financial state.
“But I don’t think it is as big a statement as when Neymar was signed by PSG as the very beginning of the diplomatic breakdown between Qatar and the rest of the Middle East. Diplomatic ties have been restored but Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are still not as cordial and getting Messi ahead of City is a big thing statement; a feather in the cap ahead of the World Cup.”
Messi’s two-year deal with PSG will expire six months after the World Cup in Qatar ends. But Dorsey says that Qatar will have reaped the benefits by then.
“Looking beyond the World Cup, there is no question that football as a soft power makes a lot of sense,” he said.
“Mega events are few and far between but there are so many soft power opportunities in Europe, for example winning the Champions League. Qatar will look to build on this and naturally its next move will be to try and host the Olympics.”