Champions Trophy: a new Doha of honor – Champions Trophy – PSG-Monaco

French football likes to treat itself to endless soap operas. After the extremely important one of TV rights, which lasted too long months until last summer, another much less essential, but very revealing of functioning, found a conclusion this week. The 2024 Champions Trophy, which we did not really know if it would eventually see the light of day, will finally be played in 2025. The LFP board of directors, meeting this Monday, validated the date of January 5 for a meeting planned… in Doha, Qatar. The announcement went through like a letter in the mail and, basically, this gala match no longer interests many people. Yes, but here it is: this umpteenth relocation says something about the problematic links between French football and the emirate.

After all, why not Qatar? Eleven of the last thirteen editions of a trophy brought up to date in 1995 took place abroad (Canada x2, Morocco x2, China x2, Tunisia, United States, Gabon, Austria, Israel) and ten of the last eleven were won by Paris Saint-Germain. This match is not intended to mark the spirits or to remain in the memories, even if we remember that Xeka had made it possible, in 2021, to add a line to the LOSC prize list and to avoid absolute hegemony of the club of the capital. Traditionally, it was more of a meeting to launch the coming season, a Super Cup to gauge each other and make the transition from one exercise to another. A trip to Gerland, another to Abbé-Deschamps or even to the Pierre-De-Coubertin stadium in Cannes, it was a national micro-event, before we wanted to transform it into an international farce.

From Beijing to Qatar

The 2024 vintage was initially scheduled for August 8, in Beijing, but in the midst of a TV rights crisis, the LFP had to backtrack and postpone its baby, due to administrative concerns to reach a total agreement with the Chinese authorities. The option of organizing the meeting in the Principality on August 28 had circulated during the summer until it was also swept aside due to the high heat and the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games. In recent weeks, Ivory Coast and Abidjan had positioned themselves to host this match between the reigning champion and their runner-up (Paris having also won the Coupe de France), but Qatar won the bet, and the event should bring in a check for three million euros, part of which must go to the two clubs, indicates The Team. A solution, of course, which suits PSG, after having already played the last edition in its garden at the Parc des Princes (2-0 victory against Toulouse).

And which has an impact on Ligue 1, since this first weekend of January was to be that of the first poster of the year in the championship between… Monaco and PSG (16^e daytime). This flagship meeting (more than the Champions Trophy) will finally be brought forward to December 18, a Wednesday evening between an L1 day and a 32^e of the Coupe de France final. As if the French championship needed to make its soap opera and one of its major shocks of the year a little more invisible in favor of a meeting which will bring in “big money”, but which a priori has not changed anything to the reputation of French football beyond its borders. ASM complies with this strange schedule, without flinching, just as Nice did not complain when its Coupe de France quarter-final against PSG was postponed last winter due to the Parisian European schedule and due to a Blue match in the Nations League scheduled for the same evening. In 2023, this time, the FFF had agreed to postpone a round of 16 of the Coupe de France between the Pays de Cassel and Paris to Monday evening, the capital club having just returned from a winter tour in the Middle East.

It's just the Champions Trophy, it's just another ecological aberration, but it's another element that highlights the central and contested role of Nasser al-Khelaïfi within French football. The man with many hats crystallizes tensions and criticism (often in private). The conflicts of interest caused by his functions as president of PSG and Bein Media Group, among others, were singled out by the senatorial mission on the intervention of investment funds in French football. Which did not prevent Vincent Labrune, re-elected in September, from defending the businessman in the columns of The Team last week: “On the question of conflicts of interest and its weight at the LFP, the situation has been strictly the same since the takeover of PSG by QSI. Neither more nor less. It is proportional to the weight of its club and its shareholder in the French football economy. Qatar's investments and PSG's results have boosted French football in recent years, we should not forget that. […] Without them, we would never have had the chance to see global stars such as Zlatan, Beckham, Neymar or Messi at home… Mbappé would never have stayed five more years in L1. » Let's shut up the nonsense and measure our luck: everything is going well in the wonderful world of French football.

PSG and Monaco will play the next Champions Trophy in Qatar