Oil and Football: Lessons from Jamal Khashoggi and Ted Lasso
In the hit Anglo-American TV series, Ted Lasso, the buoyant Mexican striker, Dani Rojas, repeats the football-affirming mantra, Football is Life!
His motto is proclaimed with a boyish grin as he embodies the love of football — of play. Much like the main character, Ted, (and, frankly, the entire cast), he is imminently likable. Amidst the pressure and power politics of soccer/football businesses, all the characters discover or re-discover their values and portray something within that is nearly impossible not to like.
If only the real-world figures of football were so likeable. This article must make the dramatic turn from that which I love — the play of soccer– to that which I am obliged to accept if I want to continue following the professional game. That is, Football is oil!
Football is Oil!
Is it a coincidence that the most successful and well-financed football clubs (aka soccer teams for Australians and Americans) are underwritten by oil?
Chelsea Football Club are (still) owned by Roman Abramovich who made his money by, um, consolidating (is that the correct euphemism???) Russian state-owned oil interests after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine have his connections to Putin been scrutinized.
Paris Saint Germain (PSG) features the three of the most recognizable one-named players in the world in Messi, Neymar and Mbappe. They are funded by Qatar Sports Investments, part of the state-run sovereign wealth fund. Any guesses as to Qatar’s leading export?
Manchester City Football Club, who seem to be treating the English Premier League as a nice warmup to galactic domination, are owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group which is owned by a member of the emirate’s royal family. The group also controls Mumbai City FC, Melbourne City FC and New York City FC (these are all football clubs). Football, it seems, is the preferred way to diversify the Abu Dhabi economy which is, of course, built upon fossil fuels.
The purchase of Newcastle United FC by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia has raised concerns, less about the oil money that funds it than about the murder of the American journalist, Jamal Khassoggi. But, the Prince of Saudi Arabia didn’t make his money from making hit records.
While the English Premier (Football) League is leading the way in petroleum-based products, this is not just an English phenomenon. Leading Italian teams are also associated with petroleum and even more so by its related products. Juventus have been run by the Agnelli Family, who own the automaker, Fiat. Inter Milan have been associated with Pirelli tires for a large part of their history. While not petroleum companies, the sale of cars and tires is clearly related to the price of gas.
The Italians have a saying, ‘il denaro non puzza’ (money has no odor). The saying originates from when the Roman empire had a tax on a much-needed industrial product–human urine. While the pee tax is gone, the saying reflects an enduring amoral approach to finances — does it really matter where the money comes from?
On June 17, 2001, I did not care where the money came from. This is the date that A.S. Roma (the team that I support) last won the scudetto (the Italian championship). ‘La Roma’ used to be funded by the petroleum company, Italpetroli, which was owned by the Sensi family who ran the club. Oil money enabled Roma to bring in Argentinian ace, Gabriel Batistuta, from Fiorentina. When ‘Bati-gol’, Francesco Totti and company beat Parma to clinch the championship, I was unconflicted. As I marched down Via del Corso in central Rome with thousands of other fans, global geo-politics were far from my mind.
The world looks different now. The world seems more volatile. The problems seem existential. (And Batistuta has long been retired).
A popular sentiment is that it’s best to keep politics and sports apart — in this line of thinking, there is no need to worry about who or what your team represents, or who is funding the squad or benefitting from your allegiance. Many people would rather be ignorant of the messy facts because what they support is a pure symbol of their city, or a nostalgia for going to matches with their dad. For them, the owners are incidental; Sport is not a business, it’s an untarnished pocket of life.
This point of view makes me think of the quote uttered by Keyser Soze in the film, the Usual Suspects: ‘The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.’ Is football a perfect ruse to conceal evil? Does the grace, skill and determination on display in athletic competition obfuscate its underlying structure? Do the affirmative aspect of sport absolve the sins of its bad actors?
It is something of tradition for leaders to use sport to promote national and/or ideological agendas. (See any image of a sitting president hosting athletes at the White House.) In the course of history, football and other sports have regularly been used by unsavory characters to attempt to launder their reputations.
Hitler used the 1936 Olympic Games and the success of boxer, Max Schmeling, to showcase his notion of supposed Aryan supremacy. Mussolini tried to use the 1934 World Cup to showcase fascism. The Cold War spurred the US and the Soviet Union to spend and compete, boycott and discredit each other in Olympic and other competitions.
Individual athletes have also used the Olympics to speak out. For example, American sprinters, Tommy Carlos and Tommie Smith, were then heavily criticized but are now widely praised for raising their closed Black fists on the podium at the Mexico City Olympics to protest racial injustice at home.
But that’s all in the past, right? We’ve moved on… Now we have Olympic games held in Beijing where athletes must not talk about the Uighurs. We have a World Cup scheduled for Qatar in stadiums built with corruption, blood, human rights abuses and oil.
In the US we have seen racist NBA franchise owners and ‘paid for’ patriotism among other painful mixtures of sports and politics.
America is unique in that we routinely stand and sing to the flag at most games. The athletes do too, except for when they don’t. Maybe we cheer on army veterans or are wowed by military jet flyovers prior to kickoff. Yet, despite our vibrant democracy, political voice and action is supposed to stop at ‘the home of the brave’. After that, the only acceptable political stance is to ‘shut up and cheer’, but since that is difficult, we ‘shut up, except to cheer.’
This has changed and is changing. In some leagues, political protest by players and teams is sometimes acceptable. Teams routinely wear pre-game t-shirts that evoke or summarize a political stance. NBA players refused to play after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which occurred in the wake of the police-inflicted deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But of course, when large sums of money are involved, not every political protest is popular.
In Europe, the football stadium often has political overtones if not overtly political clashes. Many football clubs have fan-bases that are associated with political orientations. Many of these clubs have sub-groups that loudly occupy the political extremes. I once traveled with the hardcore right-wing fans of AS Roma, the Boys. Though AS Roma fans tend to be politically left-leaning, the Boys’ clubhouse featured a statue of Mussolini holding a musket.
I went with the Boys to a match in Livorno, the seat of Italian communism. When I bought my ticket, the head of the club asked me if I was a communist, like Lucarelli. In those days, the Livorno captain, Cristiano Lucarelli, in his red jersey, would raise his closed right fist in celebration of his goals. Anyhow, once off of the bus, my travelling companions gave the fascist salute while chanting ‘Duce’ on their way into the stadium. Somehow the match was played with nothing more than verbal confrontations as the visiting fans (us) were physically separated from the home fans in the stadium.
The Italian stadium was and is a venue to show social, political, and emotional concerns. Historian Paul Ginsborg wrote, ‘Sunday afternoon at the [Italian football] stadium was sometimes a political, as much as a sentimental, education of a pretty disturbing sort.’ Protest at the stadium is common, especially against unpopular owners or players if the team is not doing well. Fans stake their own identity within fan clubs and through their teams in ways that I don’t find in the major American sports leagues.
In the U.S., as far as I know, it’s never been a political statement to wear the logo of a pro sports team.
But will this change?
These days, if I were to sport a Chelsea shirt, I would feel like I was ignoring the suffering in Ukraine. But, of course, if I saw an 8-year old kid wearing a Christian Pulisic Chelsea jersey, I would assume that the kid looks up to the talented young American, and isn’t thinking at all about global geo politics.
In Ted Lasso, the midfielder, Sam Obisanya, refuses to take part in a photo shoot for the team’s sponsor, Dubai Air, because the airline is owned by Cerithium Oil, a company that has damaged the environment in his home country, Nigeria. While Cerithium Oil is a fictional company, the name refers to a sea snail that has a nice shell. Not coincidentally, the Shell Oil Company recently settled a lawsuit for environmental damages in, you guessed it, Nigeria. In the show, Sam convinces the owner to sever ties with Dubai Air. In fiction, as in fact, oil is not far from football, even if they don’t always mix well.
Italian coaching legend, Arrigo Sacchi, once said, ‘Football is the most important of the things that are the least important.’
In itself, perhaps football is not so important. But it is tied to and symbolizes so much that is important — identity, family, social networks, culture, communal joy, hope, aspiration… money, oil and politics.
Or, as Danny Rojas learns, in Ted Lasso, ‘Even though football is life, football is also death. And sometimes football is football too. But mostly football is life!’
In our volatile world that seems to be pitting western democracy against anti-western dictatorship on a planet that is suffering from the effects of burnt fossil fuels, will sports become a way to channel our deep-seated political ideas and dreams for tomorrow?
Will wearing a Chelsea or Newcastle badge come to signify alignment or complicity with ruthless and unquestioned global capitalism?
I kind of doubt it. But at least from where I stand, something smells like piss.
