The blood was up this week. Hoo-boy, was it up. Jürgen Klopp got sent off for cursing a linesman in the Liverpool v Manchester City match. Pep Guardiola should have walked too, for his schoolgirl passive aggression towards the referee in the same game. Grown men, wealthy, decorated men, acting in a way that would get them grounded if they were teenagers.
At least Klopp had the grace to hold his hands up afterwards and apologise. City, showing a characteristic inability to take their beating, instead decided put it about — uisce faoi thalamh, of course — that Klopp’s prematch comments about there being three clubs in football with no ceiling were “borderline xenophobic”. Liverpool fired up their legal-letter cannon and took aim.
Meanwhile, over at the Saudi LIV Golf event in Jeddah, Phil Mickelson fired off another drive-by at the PGA Tour. “You have to pick what side do you think is going to be successful, and I firmly believe that I’m on the winning side of how things are going to evolve and shape in the coming years for professional golf,” he said. “I see LIV Golf trending upwards, I see the PGA Tour trending downwards and I love the side that I’m on.”
Some boyo, Mickelson. It’s only a wet week since he was calling the Saudis “scary motherfuckers”. Yet here he was, barely eight months on, shilling like his life depended on it. He was on their turf, after all.
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“Look,” he wheezed, “the game of golf is very lucky to have the PIF [Public Investment Fund, the Saudi bankroll] invest in the game. The sport of the game of golf is being influxed (sic) with billions of dollars now. And the ability to go global and make golf a truly global sport is really beneficial for the game.
“Now the United States and the UK are not favourable to this. But everywhere outside of [that] in the world, LIV Golf is loved. And eventually they’ll come around and they will be accepting of it.”
I think there’s a ton of propaganda being used and all sorts of stuff
— Rory McIlroy
Back Stateside ahead of the CJ Cup, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm volleyed back. “I really don’t know why he said that,” said Rahm, who counts Mickelson as a mentor. “I think there’s some great changes being made and great changes for the players on the tour. I truly don’t know what drove him to say something like that.”
McIlroy, likewise, is so very much done with Mickelson’s nonsense at this stage. “I don’t think anyone that takes a logical view of the game of golf can agree with what he said. I guess for them to be talking the way they are, it’s bold. I think there’s a ton of propaganda being used and all sorts of stuff.”
The common denominator in it all is, of course, the influence of the Gulf states. The determination of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar to outdo each other with fire hoses of petrostate cash and their use of global sport as part of the squabble. City, Newcastle, LIV Golf, the World Cup, Godolphin, the list of sports and sporting organisations into which the Gulf States are pouring money is endless.
Everybody has their issues and misgivings with it as a state of affairs and all of them are well-worn at this stage. The sportswashing angle has long been beaten to death, so much so that when a reporter asked Mickelson last week about what he’d said about the Saudis in February, he straight-up denied ever having done an interview. That would be the interview for which he apologised and on the back of which he disappeared from public life for five months.
And despite the fact that he was obviously dissembling on the nature of his phone call to golf writer Alan Shipnuck rather than denying what he said, the reporters present let him away with it. No follow-up. No interrogation. Just moved on to the next question and asked a soft-soap question about whether or not he felt he had turned a corner with his game. Not so much a sportswash as a complete disinfection.
None of which would matter a damn really except that within minutes, Mickelson was peddling his dog-whistle shtick about how LIV and the PIF were “negatively viewed in the UK and the US”. In the same vein as whoever was briefing from inside the Man City camp a few days later, he hadn’t the gumption to come right out and say it. But he nodded and winked and he did LIV’s bidding for them. A $200m cheque is a wonderful thing.
If the Gulf States want to insert themselves into global sport, that’s one thing. But doing it and crying xenophobia when somebody disagrees with them is another matter entirely. It’s a transparent attempt to distract from the cornucopia of issues their growing presence brings with it.
Nobody in sport has a problem with more money being pumped in. But nation states doing it very obviously queers the pitch. Not only are Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia some of the richest nations on the planet, they are also able to insinuate themselves into global sport in a way other countries can’t. There isn’t a democracy in the world that would stand for a country’s resources to be spent buying Paris St Germain.
Pointing this out isn’t xenophobic. It’s expressing a logic that a child would understand. Manchester City know that, LIV Golf know that. It’s entirely up to them if they want to go and do it anyway.
They shouldn’t be surprised though if they find that all they achieve in the process is the further alienation of an already suspicious sporting public.
