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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Essay

Culture

Middle East

Politics

24 April 2024

7 min read

Democracy and the authorities that exist

Should we insist on democracy in the Gulf?

Andrew Thompson

Andrew Thompson MBE is an Anglican priest who served in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Three members of the Oman Shura sit in it's chamber and hold their hands in prayer

Members of Oman's assembly - the Shura.

I once participated in an American University forum looking at Gulf states and the development of democracy. Underlying the barely disguised criticism of political processes in the Arab world were three assumptions. Firstly, that there was an assumption that everyone understood which model of democracy was being referred to. Secondly, that this model should be a desirable universal goal for all nations to aspire to. Finally, that democracy works and is ‘good’.

The first assumption is quickly undermined when one does a brief survey of democratic processes in European countries. There are no two countries which have a similar modus operandi when it comes to conducting elections. Which democratic model should one aspire to?

On the second assumption, I was reminded that the very concept of democracy as touted by Plato was already flawed. In Ancient Greece, the public decision-making process excluded women, peasants and slaves. The elite Athenian men who got to occupy the space of power on Pnyx Hill, were already wealthy and privileged.

Similarly, the US constitution, with its line “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights” did not include women and slaves, thus undermining the slogan ‘a government of the people by the people’.

It would seem that even today in the west, the democratic process still favours the elite and excludes certain categories of people.

Their emphasis is on values-driven leadership; these values predate Islam and were forged in the harsh climate of the desert.

So how do we define democracy?

While academics cannot agree on one definition, there is a recognition that most democracies have one main feature: that they include a transparent, accessible and inclusive process by which citizens can appoint their governments.

Free and inclusive elections are not a feature of Gulf states. The authorities in Gulf countries are often criticized for their suppression of their political opponents and flagrant abuse of human rights. While several Gulf countries do hold elections, they tend to be limited in terms of who can participate, and once elected their roles in office tend to be more advisory rather than that of a decision maker.

So how do governments in the Arabian Gulf work?

Each Gulf state is led by a ruling family who secure their position within a rentier state economy, by sharing their largesse from the oil industry with their citizens. Failure to be generous with their tribal allies would lead the ruling family into a potential conflict. A future challenge is what happens when the oil runs out. How will ruling families secure the loyalty of their citizens?

In the United Arab Emirates (a federation of seven semi-autonomous regions headed up by a ruling sheikh), I have learned their style of governance is rooted in centuries of tribal wisdom. Their emphasis is on values-driven leadership; these values predate Islam and were forged in the harsh climate of the desert.

Bad leaders generally don’t last long in tribal societies.

The quintessential Arab leader should serve their people with humility, wisdom, integrity, courage and generosity; these personal leadership qualities have underpinned Arab tribal culture for millennia. The eminent historian and pioneer sociologist, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) describes in his seminal work The Muqaddimah, observes the importance of ‘assabiya (public consensus or group cohesion) as the glue that holds successful societies together. He went onto describe how Arab societies achieved consensus. The most common form was the council of elders or a shura, in which the representatives of the tribes came to a common decision. It was a shura which appointed the first Caliph after the death of prophet Mohammed. This concept exists to this day in modern Oman, whose government describes their version of parliament as a shura. It is a matter of debate as to how representative of the people the shura is, but the point is that in Islam there is a process which exists which seeks to reach consensus or ‘assabiya. It is worth noting that the concept of ‘assabiya is reflected in Rousseau’s political philosophy of working towards the common good and will of the many. For the record, Rousseau was not a believer in democracy.

It is ‘assabiya which leads to tribes offering their allegiance to a ruling sheikh, once they are persuaded of the legitimacy of his ‘fitness’ to lead. Although Gulf dynasties have been established for several generations, it is not automatically a model of primogeniture. For example, the position of the Emir of Kuwait is supposed to be shared between two alternate branches of the Al Sabah family. On the other hand, the de facto ruler of the Emirates was the first son of the third wife on account of his political acumen and clear leadership skills.

Upon the death of a ruler, the family will seek to identify an elder within the family who displays the merits and qualities desired in a leader. These qualities are essential in holding the allegiance of most of the tribes. An incompetent, selfish or vicious ruler will swiftly disrupt the ‘assabiya and lose the allegiance of the tribes. There is a system of sorts, of checks and balances to ensure for the most part a benign ruler who will hold the best interests of their people to heart.

And it works well, as attested by the common man on the street. in the UAE there seems to be a genuine respect, even affection for many of the ruling families.

The Gulf States would be the first to say that they are not democracies, but their histories have demonstrated that overall, their countries have flourished, and political stability has been consistent. Bad leaders generally don’t last long in tribal societies.

Yet, there is still a conviction held by western governments that life in the Gulf states would improve if they adopted democracy as a way of life. While this sentiment may appear to be admirable, in reality, when democracy has been hoisted on Arab states it has not ended well.

Western politicians simply do not understand the context in which hostile, militant and organized Islamists lurk.

Kuwait was the first Gulf state to adopt a semblance of democracy and their media are among the most independent in the region. Yet the country’s commitment to move towards democracy, as an attempt to integrate with the global economy, has backfired. The Kuwaiti democratic processes have enabled a highly organized and elected Islamist group which has consistently paralyzed the Kuwaiti parliament and thwarted their pro-western policy ambitions.

It is ironic too, that where Middle Eastern countries have embraced democratic processes, the elections have been won or successfully contested by political parties who would be seen as threats to the Western world. Hamas in Palestine, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Hirak Islamist group in Algeria and the AKP in Turkey. All these supposedly democratically elected parties have faced opposition and concern from Western nations. In some cases, western powers have actively conspired to bring down elected governments in order to defend their interests. Iran is a case in point.

It would seem that democracy in the Middle East is only acceptable in the west if the ‘right’ people win it.

The democratic experiment in Iraq came with a high cost in terms of loss of lives, and the jury is still out on whether the Iraqi parliament can deliver a national agenda in which security and prosperity can be enjoyed by all their citizens.

It is for this reason that a senior Emirati leader recently explained at a press gathering, that the pressure to adopt democracy as a model of government in the Middle East is unreasonable. Western politicians simply do not understand the context in which hostile, militant and organized Islamists lurk.

“Why would anyone want to buy into a system that would inflict a country with the likes of the leaders you have now?”

That said, things are changing. The UAE sponsored Marrakesh Declaration which seeks equal citizenship in Muslim majority countries for religious minorities is clearly a step in the right direction for ensuring protection for all.

Should we then insist on democracy in the Arabian Gulf?

For thousands of years, the Arabs have had their own mechanisms of selecting leaders. They do not see the need to adopt western democratic procedures which are potentially likely to disrupt the economic prosperity and security of their citizens.

St Paul once wrote the following words in the context of an oppressive Roman Empire, ‘the authorities that exist have been established by God’. While Christians cheerfully apply this teaching to support their democratically elected leaders, it is worth asking, ‘should this not apply to the leaders of the Gulf states too’?

Meanwhile, back in the American University, a bewildered Emirati student whispered to me during a particularly strident presentation on the virtues of democracy, “Why would anyone want to buy into a system that would inflict a country with the likes of the leaders you have now?”

His words gave me pause for thought and led me to question what we assume to be a self-evident truth, that democracy should be the aspiration of all countries. Should we insist that Gulf states adopt democracy as their mode of governance? Would democracy work in the Arabian Gulf economy and culture?