Foot and COP 27: fun telescope by Denis Sieffert

It is little more than an anecdote. It’s 1986. Patrick Le Lay, the man who professed to sell “Brain Time Available at Coca-Cola”, accompanies his boss, Francis Bouygues, then CEO of TF1, to a meeting with the president of the National Football League (LNF). TF1, recently privatized, wants “at all costs” to recover the rights to broadcast the international matches played by Silvio Berlusconi’s Five.

Le Lay says he settles into his chair when he sees Bouygues signing a check he hands to his host: “ Here, put the number you want. » History does not tell the number of zeros lined up by the NFL president. What does it matter! We were here in the dramatization. But the financial globalizationit was very real.

That day, Bouygues won all the matches of the French national team. And the World Cup finals of 1998 and 2006 are still the best audiences in history for the chain. Thanks to football, its successors have sold many American soft drinks to millions of available brains. The television rights blew up the budgets of the big clubs that were previously financed by the public present in the stadiums.

But that was only the beginning. Francis Bouygues’ bluff was no accident. We were in the Thatcher-Reagan years, and Mitterrand, unfortunately. Globalization fiercely took over the mass media and most popular sports.

The small emirate buys influence and diversification. Those who ask him can no longer deny him anything.

Soon advertising was no longer enough. To buy the best players, whose salaries would make the heads of the CAC 40 jealous today (we are talking about 6 million gross monthly euros for Mbappé…), it was necessary to look elsewhere. We know the rest. The big clubs sold out to the highest bidders. The time has come for the Russian oligarchs, friends of Putin and the petro-monarchies.

Long exploited by dictators, from Mussolini in 1934 to Argentina’s Videla in 1978, football entered financial field. The two are not incompatible. The rest follows: the corruptionthe hot fan clubs, the violence…

Poor football! Today, the big European clubs are financial companies, some of which are listed on the stock market. These are attacking the best players on the planet. This is called a “market”.

And now the kids from the suburbs, the children of the poor, who suddenly drive shiny Lamborghinis or Ferraris (they all start there!), make people jealous. It is the sordid Pogba affair, when a young glory of the France team is kidnapped and stolen by old friends from the cities who do not find him sharing enough.

But the effects of this metamorphosis of football go far beyond the world of football. The emir of Qatar’s checkbook seems inexhaustible. The presidents of the big clubs are not the only ones raising a double-bottomed begging bowl. Many politicians are also in the antechamber of the Qatari embassy.

Read our feature > World Cup: Qatar has already lost

In return, the small emirate buysinfluenceand some diversification. Those who ask him can no longer deny him anything. We now know that the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar was decided over a meal in November 2010 at Nicolas Sarkozy’s Élysée Palace.

A few decisive votes were exchanged for massive investments, including the purchase of PSG and other small counterparts. It goes without saying that these markets are challenging for everyone human and environmental principles.

Now, in 2022, the calendar plays tricks on the corrupt and the corrupt. Two planetary events collided. As COP 27 failed to limit fossil fuel production again, Qatar started its World Cup.

Does Qatar’s moral fiasco mark the end of an unprincipled era? We can doubt it. The next climate conference will be held in a year… in Dubai.

One of the first producers of fossil energy experienced what was to be its heyday, which became day of shame. We will not remember here the number of human lives sacrificed for the construction of ephemeral stadiums, nor the aberration of giant vents that spit cold air on the streets of Doha, nor the guests who returned every evening to their hotel by plane in Bahrain.

We will not call againofficial homophobia of the emirate, nor its aversion to human rights. All this hits the face of the world today. And that’s good. We can measure the path taken by consciences since the World Cup was awarded to the emirate in 2010.

The contradiction between this World Cup and the objectives of COP 27 is obvious. At a time when it comes to combating fossil energies, the world is, more than ever, under the influence of the countries that produce them. Should we be surprised under these conditions that the words “gas” and “oil” do not even appear in the final statement issued on November 20 at the end of the Sharm el-Sheikh conference?

There are as tragic coherence. Does Qatar’s moral fiasco mark the end of an unprincipled era? We can doubt it. The next climate conference will be held in a year… in Dubai. Mecca of luxury tourism and owner of artificial archipelagos created on thousands of tons of imported sand. Find the error.