Ligue 1 side Paris St. Germain versus EPL club Man City, a Champions League quarterfinal "built around Arab oil wealth, with European football serving as a vehicle for a global statement of ambition," according Oliver Kay of the LONDON TIMES. These two teams "are also pawns in a bigger game in which Arab wealth and influence has spread to a Europe grappling with post-industrial financial crisis." Sheikh Mansour’s acquisition of Man City in '08 "may be described as a private, personal investment, but it is also part of the al-Nahyan family’s bid to spread the name and the reputation of Abu Dhabi, a tiny emirate whose ambitions go far beyond the hydrocarbon industry." By comparison with the other investments, the football club buyouts "might easily be dismissed as vanity projects, but they have strategic aims that have begun to be realised even as the price of oil has fallen dramatically over the past couple of years." Christopher Davidson, a reader in Middle East politics at Durham University, said that the acquisitions of Man City and PSG were "part of ‘soft power’ strategies, including the purchase of headline-grabbing sport or cultural assets, which weren’t intended to provide a return on investments but were intended to build influence [... as Abu Dhabi and Qatar] sought to project their differing visions for the future of the Gulf." Have those investments had the desired effect? Davidson: "Both seem to have delivered such soft-power dividends, along with promotion of the non- hydrocarbon sectors of their respective economies, for example tourism and real estate." Just as it would be wrong to characterize Man City and PSG "as mere vanity projects," so it would be incorrect to suggest that Abu Dhabi and Qatar "share a collaborative vision of Arab-inspired supremacy" within European football. Davidson: "Neither of these micro-states really trusts each other." Igor Mladenovic, a Paris-based sports business consultant who works in the Middle East, "agrees." He said, "Sheikh Mansour on one hand, the al-Thani family on the other, they’re not friends, they don’t have regional projects in common. There’s a huge rivalry between Abu Dhabi and Doha" (LONDON TIMES, 4/6).
