Messi the latest pawn in proxy rivalry in Middle East
Football: The recent World Cup winner has been suspended by PSG reportedly for two weeks
Lionel Messi was supposed to be training alongside his Paris Saint-Germain teammates on Monday, with his club embroiled in an increasingly fraught French league title race.
Instead, the soccer great was in Saudi Arabia, holding a falcon on his arm, watching a palm-weaving demonstration and looking around the Arabian Horse Museum as part of his commercial contract with the kingdom to promote tourism in the Middle Eastern country.
It will prove to be an expensive trip for the recent World Cup winner. Messi has been suspended by PSG reportedly for two weeks, when he won’t get paid or be allowed to train or play with the team. That could yet spark the end of a turbulent and somewhat underwhelming two-season spell at a club where soap opera-style drama, on and off the field, is rarely far away given the presence of other superstars like Kylian Mbapp and Neymar in the squad.
It also exposes the tensions now that Qatar and Saudi Arabia gulf neighbors and fierce recent rivals in regional politics have become major influencers in the world of soccer.
Messi is right in the middle of it all, through his own making and because everyone inside and outside the game wants a piece of one of the all-time greats. The Argentina forward never intended to be playing for PSG, a club owned by Qatar Sports Investments, but found himself moving there in 2021 after previous team Barcelona, the soccer love of his life, plunged into financial problems that still persist.
Immediately, it thrust Messi into the hands of the Qataris, given QSI is a subsidiary of the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund, and invited accusations against him of sportswashing.
Messi placed himself in an even more delicate position last year when, just a few months before the World Cup in Qatar, he signed up to be essentially an ambassador for Saudi Arabia. Hence this week’s trip to the kingdom, which he decided to make without PSG’s permission and covering a period when the squad had been asked to train in response to the team’s 3-1 loss at home against Lorient on Sunday.
According to French daily L’Equipe, PSG coach Christophe Galtier had pledged to give his players Monday and Tuesday off if they beat Lorient. Instead, the team trained on Monday and had Tuesday off.
