Its all about money. Obscene levels of cash. And all of it, seemingly, going to Kylian Mbappe, the French superstar currently (as at time of writing) playing for Paris St Germain. But he wants to leave and go to Real Madrid. Because Real keep beating PSG in the champions league so the rationale is: move to the winning side, rather than, ‘we CAN beat them next time’. The French have a long history of such a paradigm, moving to the winning side, like when the Nazis arrived in Paris during the war. PSG are so fearful that their star player will leave next year ‘for free’, as his contract expires, the Qataris who own the club paid him 100 million Euros to extend another year. Plus his salary, about 50 mil, and you’re already way over the line of ‘stupid’ and into the realms of ‘Middle East oil and gas’. But they’re paying him that so that they have something to sell to Real Madrid and will get 200 to 300 million for him, so it’s not a bad investment. But then, in step Al-Hilal, the Saudi club (yes, they play football in Saudi Arabia, and they have a Premier League) who specialise in sweeping up older players to give them a pension plan they could never otherwise dream of. And Al-Hilal will pay 300 million Euros to get Mbappe, possibly only for the one year before he goes to Madrid. And pay him in the region of 600 thousand Euros. But in a game ruined by the glory-seeking and sports-washing aspirations of oil rich super-powers, (I would have included Russia in that bracket too, but they’ve gone), this is so fucked up.

Yet, you bring in stars, you please the crowds. Or in fact you draw the crowds in the hopes that they’ll be pleased. Little Leo Messi played his first game for Inter Miami the other day. Acquired on a free transfer from PSG, Little (and a bit ‘old’) Leo was drawn to Miami by David Beckham, cos he doesn’t need the $50million a year really. Immediately the stadium was sold out. And oddly, not just by people (if you count Americans as ‘people’) who are football fans, but people who have never wanted to see a ‘soccer’ match before. In steps the little Argie and changes the parameters. More ticket sales, more merchandising, more tv advertising, the train moves on. Will it ever ‘replace’ the holy trinity of NFL, Baseball and basketball over there? Doubtful. But as a nice little ‘addition’, it could improve with the addition of the greatest player of 3 generations.

Will Mbappe bring those Saudis flooding to the games? Possibly, but the rather sick thing there is that they don’t do things to recoup an investment. Nor turn a profit. They do things like spending almost a billion Euros on one player for one year, because they can. And if ‘we’ feel this to be vomit-inducingly obscene, vulgar and horrible, really and unfortunately, that’s our problem.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx