Lionel Messi on Monday was slated to undergo training sessions with his Paris Saint-Germain compatriots, while the club finds itself mired in an escalating and aggressive French league title competition.
Instead, the football great was in Saudi Arabia, holding a falcon on his arm, watching a palm-weaving demonstration and looking around the Arabian Horse Museum as part of his commercial contract with the kingdom to promote tourism in the Middle Eastern country.
It will be an expensive trip for the recent World Cup winner.
Messi has been suspended by PSG – reportedly for two weeks when he won’t get paid or be allowed to train or play with the team. That could yet spark the end of a turbulent and somewhat underwhelming two-season spell at a club where soap opera-style drama, on and off the field, is rarely far away, given the presence of other superstars like Kylian Mbappe and Neymar in the squad.
It also exposes the tensions now that Qatar and Saudi Arabia – gulf neighbors and fierce recent rivals in regional politics – have become major influencers in the world of football.
Messi is right in the middle of it all, through his own making, and because everyone – inside and outside the game – wants a piece of one of the all-time greats.
Argentina forward never intended to be playing for PSG, a club owned by Qatar Sports Investments, but he moved there in 2021 after his previous team Barcelona, the football love of his life, plunged into financial problems that persist.
Immediately, it thrust Messi into the hands of the Qataris, given QSI is a subsidiary of the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund, and invited accusations against him of sportswashing.
Messi placed himself in an even more delicate position last year when, just a few months before the World Cup in Qatar, he signed up to be an ambassador for Saudi Arabia.
Hence this week’s trip to the kingdom, which he decided to make without PSG’s permission and covering a period when the squad had been asked to train in response to the team’s 3-1 loss at home against Lorient on Sunday.
According to the French daily L’Equipe, PSG coach Christophe Galtier had pledged to give his players Monday and Tuesday off if they beat Lorient. Instead, the team trained on Monday and had Tuesday off.
In the wake of Messi’s resulting suspension, the Saudi Tourism Authority released a lengthy news release detailing the movements of the man it called a "football icon" and his family on a day he was supposed to still be in France. Other aspects of the trip included "feeding the indigenous Arabian gazelles," while the Messis apparently also were "charmed by the authenticity and architecture of At-Turaif and the beauty of the Arabian horses."
"Messi’s visit to Saudi was packed with exciting activities, with something for everyone in the family," the tourism board boasted.
It would make interesting reading for PSG President Nasser Al-Khelaifi, chairperson of QSI and beIN Media Group, which has been the victim of broadcasting piracy in Saudi Arabia in recent years.
Indeed, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are engaged in a proxy battle to be the epicenter of Asian football. The presidency of the Asian Football Confederation is vacant in 2027, and both have potential candidates lined up.
Since elections in February, the presidents of the Saudi and Qatari football federations – Yasser Almisehal and Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, respectively – are members of the FIFA Council, the executive body that makes the decisions in world football.
The neighbors and rivals were competing to host the 2027 Asian Cup until a solution emerged that rewarded both.
Qatar stepped up when China handed back hosting rights to the 2023 edition, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, and that tournament will start in Doha in January. The AFC then awarded Saudi Arabia the 2027 edition – a likely audition for ambitions to stage a future World Cup, possibly in 2034.
It does not stop at football. Doha will host the multi-sport Asian Games in 2030, and Qatar is widely expected to launch another campaign to host an Olympics in the city, this time in 2036.
The 2034 Asian Games are in Riyadh, and Saudi Arabia won a bid to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games in a futuristic mountains resort, Trojena, that is not yet built.
This is way above Messi’s head, but his decision-making over the past two years has placed him front and center in this regional contest.
His ties with PSG may be coming to an end, however. His contract expires at the end of this season and there’s uncertainty about his next destination, with reports linking him to Inter Miami in MLS, a return to Barcelona, and, naturally, a money-spinning move to a Saudi team, potentially Al-Hilal.
Playing for Al-Hilal would place him in confrontation with long-time rival Cristiano Ronaldo, who has been at Saudi team Al-Nassr since the start of the year.
Shifting the Messi-Ronaldo rivalry to Saudi Arabia would sum up modern-day football, with the riches of the Middle East proving as enticing to two of the game’s GOATs as they are to FIFA and other sports bodies.