Column

Comment

Ethics

Football

Politics

9 June 2025

5 min read

PSG’s win signals politics over purpose – other institutions take note

When church and football feign neutrality, politics can ride roughshod

Jonathan Rowlands

Jonathan is a theology lecturer and Liverpool FC fan.

A footballer holds up the European cup, behind him fans are jubillant.

PSG fans celeberate.

PSG.TV.

There’s a new name on the Champions League trophy.

In the most one-sided final in the competition’s history, Paris Saint-Germain trounced Inter Milan 5-0 to lift Europe’s most prestigious club trophy for the first time in their history.

But this is not the PSG of recent years. Gone are the Galacticos: no Messi, no Neymar, no Mbappe. Where previously PSG resembled a 13-year-old boy’s attempt to win Football Manager by just buying all the best players, this year’s team looks like … well, a team.

And what a team. Vitinha is metronomic in midfield. The game is played at his pace. He is the jazz instructor in Whiplash. “Not my tempo,” he says, over and over again, until reality bends to his will. Hakimi and Mendes are boundless balls of energy as the two wing-backs. They always threaten and it is no surprise that Hakimi gets the first goal.

And then there are the forwards. 19-year-old Désiré Doué somehow looks the consummate professional at such a young age. Ousmane Dembélé has a quiet night by his standards, but the Barcelona reject looks born to play for this team. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is the kind of footballer you imagine yourself as when playing on school playgrounds. So unorthodox, but simply irresistible. The ultimate jumpers-for-goalposts footballer. He may well be the closest thing football has to a personification of what the sport is all about. He is joy and flare masquerading as a 24-year-old Georgian lad.

At the helm of it all is Luis Enrique. Enrique’s teams are aggressive, fluid, and intelligent. “They pass forward with spite” Steven Gerrard says during the TV coverage of the match. What a line.

In 2019, Enrique lost his youngest daughter Xana to bone cancer, aged just nine. To hear him talk about his loss is heartbreaking. At full-time the PSG fans unveil a picture of Xana with her dad in a genuinely tender moment of compassion and humanity.

All this is to say that, wherever you look, this incarnation of PSG is a deeply, deeply likeable one.

But then, that’s the point, isn’t it?

PSG were taken over by Qatar Sports Investments in 2011. Qatar’s near 15-year involvement with the club has led to eye-watering sums of money being spent with the stated aim of winning the Champions League. In 2017, they sign Neymar from Barcelona, meeting the €222 million release clause in his contract. A fee so deliberately high no-one would ever meet it. A fee still unsurpassed eight years on.

While the age of the superstars may be over at PSG, they still have European football’s highest wage budget by some distance (an impressive feat when you remember that Real Madrid exist). Their Georgian talisman Kvaratskhelia only moved to the club in January for a reported €70m. Hardly loose change.

Paris Saint-Germain is a Qatari ‘sportswashing’ project. An attempt to make a political regime palatable to European sensibilities by assembling a football team that is deeply, deeply likeable.

And it certainly seems to be working. Rio Ferdinand, on co-commentary for the final, declared that a PSG victory would be ‘good for football’. So did Jason Burt, chief football correspondent for The Telegraph in an article that unironically has a subtitle starting “They may be funded by a nation state but …”.

This is why I find it so disingenuous when people demand we ‘keep politics out of football’. (And anyway, what people often mean here is that they’d like to keep left-wing politics out of football, like the ‘take a knee’ or ‘rainbow laces’ campaigns). Politics is already in football and has been for quite some time now. If you haven’t spotted it, you simply haven’t been paying attention.

I like Luis Enrique. I adore Vitinha. Kvaratskhelia makes me misty-eyed about the very nature of football. But PSG winning the Champions League is bad for football, because it’s a political victory before it’s a sporting one

PSG’s triumph is a timely reminder to the Church that it must remember the political nature of the call placed upon its very existence.

As is so often the case, football and religion find parallels in one another. For the Church, too, all too frequently finds itself as a political football. Debate continues about the place of Church of England Bishops in the House of Lords with only 33 per cent of Britons keen for religious leaders to express political opinions.

But while this would certainly make the Church’s life easier, it’s simply not an option available to it.

‘Gospel’ is not a Christian term. Not originally. It was a term used to describe an announcement or decree made about the Roman Emperor, a practice the Romans adopted from the Greeks before them. It is, in other words, an intractably political term. It is the ‘party-political broadcast’ of the ancient world.

In hijacking the term ‘Gospel’ as a description for Jesus’ life and teaching, the early Church announces itself as an irrevocably political entity from its very beginnings. A body of people called to proclaim a political message. Or, at least, a message with significant political implications. Christ is king; Caesar is not.

This does not mean that the Church is inherently left- or right-leaning. The Church is far older than this simplistic understanding of politics and will surely outlive it, too. But it does mean that the Church has a stake in the politics of the day; that it cannot be politically disinterested without simultaneously compromising something of its most fundamental identity.

PSG’s Champions League win is not the first by a nation-backed club. Manchester City – principally owned by Vice President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan – won the Champions League in 2023 (also beating Inter Milan in the final; bless them). Depending on what we make of Roman Abramovich’s connections to the Russian state, it’s also worth noting Chelsea’s wins in 2012 and 2021, too.

But PSG’s win – and the emphatic nature of it over one of the ‘old guards’ of club football – feels like a watershed moment for the sport. It is the culmination of the past 20-or-so years of both football’s internal politics, and the external politics acting upon it. It is a worrying statement of intent of its direction of travel, too.

When Christianity and football feign political neutrality, they simply invite the dominant politics of the day to ride roughshod over them. Insidious politics will always fill any vacuum available to it. PSG’s triumph is a timely reminder to the Church that it must remember the political nature of the call placed upon its very existence. Otherwise it will find itself a mouthpiece for a kingdom to which it does not belong.

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Review

Books

Comment

Digital

Re-enchanting

6 May 2024

9 min read

Re-enchanting the anxious generation

The future doesn’t have to be horrible.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Two teenager lean against a rail, arms crossed, and laugh together.

LaShawn Dobbs on Unsplash.

I meet many anxious people as I wait for meetings in the Palace Westminster, but one in particular stands out. As I was queueing to get through security, a breathless American man rushed over asking if he was in the right place to meet the Minister of State for Universities. Once I had reassured him that he was, and he had caught his breath, I asked him where he was from and what he did for a job. He told me he was a social psychologist from New York.

Funnily enough, the night before, I had been reading a book by a social psychologist from New York. I asked the man if he had come across the author, Jonathan Haidt. He replied with a smile: “I am Jonathan Haidt.”

I chuckle when I remember that chance encounter, especially considering the title of his latest book – The Anxious Generation. The book tackles a much more serious topic than queueing nerves. It claims to show, in the words of the subtitle: “How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”.

The Anxious Generation is a tightly argued plea to parents and educators for a radical change in the way that young people are allowed to engage with digital technology in general and social media in particular.

It follows the line of thought he began in his book The Coddling of the American Mind which argued that ‘helicopter parenting’ has led to such a fragility in young adults that universities are no longer places of open and free dialogue, but somewhere young people feel the need to be protected from ideas they disagree with. That problem was what Haidt was preparing to discuss with the Minister when we met outside Parliament.

“Embracing all this is a desire to maintain and hand on to our children an earth that offers genuine possibilities of flourishing.”

Mary Grey

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Krish Kandiah

A new biography explores the man who shaped the digital decades

5 min read

2025-08-11

The Anxious Generation makes a compelling case for the way we are failing a generation of children. It likens the social media world to another planet that we are all happily sending our children off to without first learning about or checking any of the risks linked with the potentially toxic environment. It concludes that as much as we are overprotecting our children in the physical world, we are under-protecting them in the digital world, thereby complicit in the resulting tidal wave of mental health disorders.

Haidt writes:

“Are screen-based experiences less valuable than real-life flesh-and-blood experiences? When we’re talking about children whose brains evolved to expect certain kinds of experiences at certain ages, yes. A resounding yes.”

Haidt argues that what children need is less screen time and more unsupervised play. Some might call this the re-enchantment of childhood– a rediscovery of wonder, and simple emotional connections with freedom, food, imagination, curiosity, those around them and the great outdoors. Perhaps there is healthy therapy to be found in this re-enchantment through the sharing of art, poetry, and fantasy. Maybe a rediscovery of faith and hope can help to bring healing.

Mary Grey, Emeritus Professor of Theology at the University of Wales in Lampeter, describes re-enchantment like this:

“The market’s language of desire must be replaced by reflecting what we really long for, like satisfying relationships and intimacy, meaningful communities where our values are shared, with working conditions that do not create an unbearable level of stress, enough income to cover basic and leisure needs, and planning for the future. Embracing all this is a desire to maintain and hand on to our children an earth that offers genuine possibilities of flourishing. … This is not an invitation to exchange reality for Magic Kingdoms, but to become embodied kinships of women, men, children and earth creatures in a re-imagined and transformed world of sustainable earth communities of healing and hope.”

The re-enchantment of childhood is an attractive theory. I often find myself comparing my children’s childhood with that of my own. I’m sure I played more in the garden than they do, climbed more trees, cycled more round the block, round the town, and later round the county in my spare time. I remember as a teenager getting on a bus to travel from Brighton to Durham without either parents or phones. Around the same time, I travelled to Tbilisi, Georgia with just a backpack, a map, a couple of friends and quite a lot of self-confidence. I wish that my children could experience some of the pleasures that come with fixing a bike or looking up at the stars or browsing the library to find answers, instead of just googling.

Yet, at the same time, if my children were making their way to Durham or Tbilisi today, I would certainly make sure they had plenty of charge on their phone and all the necessary mobile data roaming rights, and I would probably WhatsApp them regularly until they arrived safely at their destination.

Haidt presents a perfect story, one that explains all the evidence. He doesn’t mention anything that might challenge it, or anything that the doesn’t quite fit.

Haidt’s book touches a nerve. Not just because of my own contradictory feelings as a parent, but because of the shocking statistics that reflect the wider state of our nation’s children. With waiting lists for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services at a record high, a 47 per cent increase in young people being treated for eating disorders compared to pre-pandemic, and an enormous leap in prevalence of probable mental disorder from one in nine children (in England aged 8-25 years old in 2017) to one in five (similar cohort in 2023), the mental health of the next generation is rightly highly concerning.

The blame has been levelled in many different directions: COVID lockdowns, school league tables, excessive homework, helicopter parenting, screen time, and general disenchantment in society at large. Some even say the increase is directly related to the increase in public discussion and awareness about mental health disorders.

For Haidt it is social media that is public mental health enemy number one. However, he does admit he is not a specialist in children’s mental health, child psychology or clinical psychology. This has led to some criticism about his conclusions. Professor Candice L. Odgers, the Associate Dean for research into psychological science and informatics at the University of California challenges head on the central argument of Haidt’s book. She claims:

“...the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental health crisis in young people.”

Similarly Henna Cundill, a researcher with the centre for autism and theology at the University of Aberdeen, wrote last week in an article for Seen and Unseen:

“From a scientific perspective, the argument is a barrage of statistics, arranged to the tune of ‘correlation equals causation’. “

Cundill and Professor Odgers are right to be sceptical. Sometimes we let our commitment to a story shape the way that we read the evidence. If there’s one thing I remember from A- level statistics it is that causation and correlation should not be confused. In his bid to add urgency and cogency to his argument, Haidt presents a perfect story, one that explains all the evidence. He doesn’t mention anything that might challenge it, or anything that the doesn’t quite fit. It is not a scientific treatise - which is both the book’s strength and its weakness.

Nevertheless, many of the recommendations Haidt suggests are wise and helpful. Even Professor Odgers, to some extent, agrees.

“Many of Haidt’s solutions for parents, adolescents, educators and big technology firms are reasonable, including stricter content-moderation policies and requiring companies to take user age into account when designing platforms and algorithms. Others, such as age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices, are unlikely to be effective in practice — or worse, could backfire given what we know about adolescent behaviour.”

Therein lies the issue. Because of the lack of evidence for the causes, all we are left with – even from the experts – is what may or may not be likely to be effective in practice.

I wonder if this paucity of robust scientific evidence stems from the fact that the issues facing the next generation are even more complex than we could ever imagine.

The truth is that hype, hysteria and horror are more likely to gain traction than humdrum and happy medium.

Every generation is different from the last. My own youth in the UK in the late 1980s when I became part of the video games and micro-computers subculture was just as much a mystery to my parents and teachers. My generation’s problems were blamed on everything from the microwave to Mrs Thatcher to the milk that we drank following the disaster at Chernobyl.

It seems to me too simplistic to demonise the technology. It’s an easy sell, after all. In fact, whenever there is a major technical shift, horror stories are created by those who believe the dangers outweigh the benefits. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein seems to be a reaction to the industrial revolution. The nuclear threat led to movies about Godzilla and 60-foot-tall Amazonian women. The advent of the internet brought us the Terminator films.

The truth is that hype, hysteria and horror are more likely to gain traction than humdrum and happy medium. Yet, despite the many and serious problems, the rise of new technologies, even social media, also have much to offer, and they are not going away soon. Instead of demonising new technology as the problem, perhaps we need to find ways to turn it into the solution.

And perhaps there are glimmers of hope. I like the fact that my children are connected to the wider world, that they know people and languages from more diverse places than I ever did. I like that they know what is going on in the world way before the 9 o’clock news. I like the fact that they are on the cutting edge of advancements I will never experience in my lifetime. I like the fact that they can get their homework checked by AI, that they don’t need to phone me up every time they want to try a new recipe, that we can grumble together about the football match in real time even when we are on different sides of the world. I like that they can browse the Bible or listen to podcasts about history while they are waiting at a bus stop. I like the fact that they have libraries of books at their fingertips, that they can disappear into fantasy worlds with a swipe and don’t have to spend hours at the job centre when they need to find work. And I love the fact that my children and their friends are rediscovering board games, crochet, embroidery and hiking and taking them to a whole new level because they are learning these crafts from experts around the world.

I sincerely appreciate that Jonathan Haidt cares about the real and desperate problem of youth mental health. His book adds weight to the pleas of those of us advocating for urgent investment into this area. It reminds us of the world beyond the digital borders and it gives us hope that the re-enchantment of childhood is not impossible.

However, the solution to these complex issues cannot be found in nostalgia alone. We cannot turn back the clock, nor should we want to. The past had problems of its own.

I would love someone to write a book that looks forward, that equips young people to live in the worlds of today and tomorrow. If, by some strange coincidence, Jonathan Haidt is reading this article and is in the process of writing that book, I do hope I will bump into him again to thank him.