The city of Paris is awash with the glory and prestige of reaching tonight’s European Champions’ League final. They daubed the Eiffel Tower in PSG (that’s Paris St Germain, their football team) colours and made the biggest fuss ever about reaching the world’s most prestigious football match, for the very first time. (When Spurs reached it last year, they drew a cockerel in chalk on the pavement outside Tottenham town hall, but it was spoilt when a kid was stabbed there ten minutes later). Such is the importance of this game.

The City of Doha was even more celebratory, as it might be tonight again if PSG manage to beat Bayern Munich. They’ll be drinking Coke (not even Diet!!!) all night long, and will doubtless paint their robes in PSG livery. Well, the men will, the women aren’t allowed out at night. Unless they have written permission from their ‘man’, or for purposes of being raped by someone else’s ‘man’.

So PSG is Paris’s team. I get that. But it is owned by a Qatari sports investment vehicle, run by the state. Much like Manchester City is owned by Abu Dhabi. And the team is captained by a Brazilian, much as mine is captained by a Frenchman. I get that too. I also have a real soft spot for their Brazilian, Neymar Junior, because he is a truly gifted and characterful dude who graces the game with sublime skill and ability.

Yet there’s something noble about Bayern Munich, which is also filled with ‘forrriners’, because the German model is that clubs are in part always owned by a collective of its fans. Local people. Ok, ‘local’ where Munich is concerned may not conjure up the best of ‘local’ imagery if you go back to the 1930s and 40s, but Bayern Munich was always known as a ‘Jewish team’. In part because it was owned before the war by a Jew and also because it always had Jewish connections. Which is why the Nazis hated the club, particularly after numerous acts of defiance by the club. And defying the Nazis at the height of their power was right on the line between ‘bravery’ and ‘stupidity’, but they did it anyway.

Tonight’s game is massive. The two undoubted ‘best teams’ in Europe fighting for its most prestigious prize. The two most entertaining teams too. Bayern beat Barcelona 8-2 in the semi-final. That’s some score at that level of the game.

So in line with my absolute golden rule of ‘NO POLITICS WHERE FOOTBALL IS CONCERNED’, I need to know whether to favour the illegitimately owned bastard club of a horrible French nation, the plaything of human rights abusing oil billionaires in the Gulf who made a mockery of the entire beautiful game by corruptly ‘winning’ the World Cup in 2022? Or the noble Germans who stood up to Hitler and is part owned by lovable(??) beer-swilling, lederhosen-wearing… Krauts.

Tough one.

Happy Euro Day

A xxxx