Messi the latest pawn in proxy rivalry in Middle East

Lionel Messi was supposed to be training alongside his Paris SaintGermain teammates on Monday with his club embroiled in an increasingly fraught French league title raceInstead the soccer great was in Saudi Arabia holding a falcon on his arm watching a palmweaving demonstration and looking around the Arabian Horse Museum as part of his commercial contract with the kingdom to promote tourism in the Middle Eastern countryIt will prove to be an expensive trip for the recent World Cup winnerAlso ReadNapoli coach Spalletti on verge of biggest moment of careerMessi has been suspended by PSG reportedly for two weeks when he wont get paid or be allowed to train or play with the team That could yet spark the end of a turbulent and somewhat underwhelming twoseason spell at a club where soap operastyle drama on and off the field is rarely far away given the presence of other superstars like Kylian Mbappeacute and Neymar in the squadIt 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 soccerMessi 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 alltime greatsThe Argentina forward never intended to be playing for PSG a club owned by Qatar Sports Investments but found himself moving there in 2021 after previous team Barcelona the soccer love of his life plunged into financial problems that still persistImmediately it thrust Messi into the hands of the Qataris given QSI is a subsidiary of the emirates sovereign wealth fund and invited accusations against him of sportswashingMessi 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 essentially an ambassador for Saudi ArabiaHence this weeks trip to the kingdom which he decided to make without PSGs permission and covering a period when the squad had been asked to train in response to the teams 31 loss at home against Lorient on SundayAccording to French daily LEquipe 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 offIn the wake of Messis resulting suspension the Saudi Tourism Authority released a long news release detailing the movements of the man it called a iquestfootball iconiquest and his family on a day he was supposed to still be in France Other aspects of the trip included iquestfeeding the indigenous Arabian gazellesiquest while the Messis apparently also were iquestcharmed by the authenticity and architecture of AtTuraif and the beauty of the Arabian horsesMessis visit to Saudi was packed with exciting activities with something for everyone in the familyiquest the tourism board boastedIt would make interesting reading for PSG president Nasser AlKhelaifi chairman of QSI and beIN Media Group which has been the victim of broadcasting piracy in Saudi Arabia in recent yearsIndeed Saudi Arabia and Qatar are engaged in a proxy battle to be the epicenter of Asian soccer The presidency of the Asian Football Confederation is vacant in 2027 and both have potential candidates line upSince elections in February the presidents of the Saudi and Qatari soccer federations Yasser Almisehal and Sheikh Hamad Al Thani respectively are members of the FIFA Council the executive body that makes the decisions in world soccerThe neighbors and rivals were competing to host the 2027 Asian Cup until a solution emerged that rewarded bothQatar stepped up when China handed back hosting rights to the 2023 edition citing the COVID19 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 2034It does not stop at soccer Doha will host the multisport Asian Games in 2030 and Qatar is widely expected to launch another campaign to host an Olympics in the city this time in 2036The 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 builtAll of this of course is way above Messis head but his decisionmaking over the past two years has placed him front and center in this regional contestHis ties with PSG may be coming to end however His contract expires at the end of this season and theres uncertainty about his next destination with reports linking him to Inter Miami in MLS a return to Barcelona and naturally a moneyspinning move to a Saudi team potentially AlHilalPlaying for AlHilal would place him in direct confrontation with longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo who has been at Saudi team AlNassr since the start of the yearShifting the MessiRonaldo rivalry to Saudi Arabia would sum up modernday soccer with the riches of the Middle East proving as enticing to two of the games GOATs as they are to FIFA and other sports bodiesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever