Professor Simon Chadwick is a researcher, writer, academic, consultant, policy advisor, and speaker, with more than twenty-five years experience in the global sport industry. His work focuses on the geopolitical economy of sport, whilst he has a particular interest in AfroEurasia. Chadwick is Professor of Sport and Geopolitical Economy at Skema Business School in Paris, where he is also a member of its think tank – Publika.

1- Professor Chadwick, your last book “The Geopolitical Economy of Sport” explores the intersection between sport politics and state interests, shaping top level sport around the world.

State interest has always played a part in football, mainly for internal reasons. Globalisation changed things: it seems like nowadays it is impossible to understand football without a knowledge of International Relations. How did we get to this point?

I think football now, the way that we talk about football and the way in which we seek to understand football, in many ways is just no different to how it's always been. 

My club is Middlesbrough - we have a connection here in the form of Fabrizio Ravanelli - and was founded in 1876, in the context of the Industrial Revolution and the urbanization of Britain. People, you know, they lived tough lives. They wanted something to do in their leisure time on weekends. 

Football clubs emerged, obviously, as an answer: during the late 19th century, those clubs were formalized and the game was codified. 

Many of us, me included, were born with a team and we die with a team. There is a context there: it's about family, friends, place and upbringing. 

For a long time, we talked about football in socio-cultural terms. 

Then, in the last quarter of the 20th century, we started to talk about football, not just in these terms, but also in commercial terms. You can probably remember that there was a lot of resistance amongst football fans about talking about the sport in this way. 

I mean, people thought football was about your scores, your personal history, family and friends and all those other things that I just mentioned. So, when you began to talk about revenues, turnover, profitability, merchandise sales, sponsorships, broadcasting deals, people had a real resistance to this, there were even movements of fans against modern football, across Europe. And yet, over a period of 30 years, now it's just normal to talk about football in this way. 

And so we've had this kind of dual conversation about football, where yes, it's about me and my personal history, but it's also about the club and how much money it's making. 

Now, we have entered a third age, I actually call it football 3.0, and we're talking about the geo-politicization of football. I think the way in which we frame the game of football is not immune from the rest of the world, it doesn't exist in a vacuum from the rest of the world. Football is just an outcome of other things. 

The football that we now are writing about, researching, commenting on and watching on TV, is an outcome of the time and in our time the world is changing, geopolitically speaking. It’s a world that requires us to know about soft power, diplomacy, International Relations and the way in which all of these things interact with economics. 

So, the book that we've just published, “The Geopolitical Economy of Sport” is almost like a snapshot in time. If we took a photograph of elite professional sport in 2022 the book would be what it looks like. 

2- The current international political system: what are its most relevant features in relation to football? What should a football fan know about it, in order to better understand what is going on?

The world is pivoting from Global North to Global South: the Global North includes countries like Italy, France, Britain, United States, the Global South includes countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and China. 

What we're experiencing is that the balance of power is shifting towards nations that during modern history hadn't necessarily played a significant or prominent role, either globally, or specifically within football: who could have imagined that Qatar would host the World Cup? Who could have imagined that the World Cup would take place seven days before Christmas? It is an illustration of how the balance of economic and political power within the world is changing. 

Globalization essentially was an outcome of the fall of the Communist Bloc and the victory of capitalism, free markets, trade liberalization. 

But what we've seen as a consequence is that obviously also countries like China benefited from globalization and so has Qatar, Saudi Arabia and many others, so we now live in a multipolar world. And this notion of multipolarism is really important. 

Back to the Cold War, that was a bipolar world, but now we’re living in a multipolar world where multiple countries, or blocs of countries, equally have a degree of power and control which they can exercise in the relations with others. 

This means that in sporting terms, instead of all those old certainties of a global sporting model that was effectively created by Europeans and has more recently been sustained by American money, we are now increasingly finding ourselves having to account for and accommodate the likes of Saudi Arabia, Russia and many others. 

What should a football fan know about it in order to better understand what is going on? I guess in simple terms, we live in a changing world and so many of the old certainties with which we're familiar in Europe, and we're born and brought up in are being eroded.

Keep in mind global governing bodies for sports are mostly based in Switzerland: these are essentially European organizations established by Europeans located in Europe, whereby rules, conventions and acknowledgement of rights has been dictated by Europe. 

What we're now beginning to see is that there are challenges to that. We see, for instance, UEFA is seeking to open up an office in the United States, because essentially, the big money, the economic power in global sport is not in Europe, it's in the United States, which accounts for about 40% of the total industry size. Equally, when it comes to the World Cup, people raise this whole issue of climate and say: you can't play football in Qatar in the summer. But the reality is that Qatar had sufficient economic and political power to be able to get the tournament rescheduled.

Look at the armband dispute that we saw during the World Cup: England, Germany and Denmark wanted to wear a rainbow armband advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, while Moroccans and other teams from West Asia wanted to display their bands in support of Palestine. 

So, you know, in this pivoting world, what we see as being our rights are sometimes very different to the rights of others. 

We're now in a very difficult place: it's almost a confrontation between Global North and Global South. We see the world in different ways. We've got different values, we believe in different things, we have different levels of economic and political power. So what we've been encountering, not just with the Qatar World Cup, but for example, with Manchester City winning the Champions League is a very different, conflicted world where Global North and Global South are competing, and this is not about to end anytime soon. 

I think it will be a characteristic of certainly the next 25 years, possibly the next 50 years. Will the biggest clubs in the world be European in 25 years time? That may not be the case. Absolutely. That may not be the case. It's a very turbulent and uncertain time that we live in. 

3- The most shocking news are coming from Saudi Arabia: Ronaldo, Benzema, Kanté… and how many more? What should we know about the pharaonic Saudi plan for football? What do they really want to achieve? Will it end up like the Chinese Super League or is it something different?

To start with the final question, Saudi Arabia is not China. 

China is a country with no significant football culture. There are football fans in China, but essentially, it has always been and remains a minority interest sport. 

In Saudi Arabia, the number one sport without question is football. And keep in mind that it's almost 30 years since Saudi Arabia qualified for the World Cup for the first time, you routinely have Saudi Arabian teams qualifying for and even sometimes winning the Asian Champions League. We even had Al Hilal making the Champions League final in Asia 3 times during the last 4 years

So Saudi Arabia is different. The funding is there, the teams are there. The infrastructure to a certain extent is there. What Saudi Arabia doesn't have is a hugely successful national team, although its FIFA ranking position is definitely different to China's. Of course, once you get outside of the big population centers in Saudi Arabia, the nature of fandom starts to change. Certainly there are far fewer funds and fewer people go into games. 

But I think it's an unfair comparison to make between China and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is now seeking to diversify its economy's huge dependence on oil and gas. The consumption of oil is projected to increase up to 2045 and then, it will decrease dramatically. So: Saudi Arabia is exposed. It needs to diversify into other sectors. Sport is one of those sectors, others are things like alternative energy, natural resources exports like lithium, tourism, cinema, there are a whole bunch of different sectors into which Saudi Arabia is investing. So, football is part of a much bigger picture and it is the means to an end, which is to diversify the economy. 

These moves are also about securing the ruling family. Governments in the Gulf region typically are afraid of an Arab Spring returning. 

So Arab Spring 2.0, where lots of young people suddenly decide they don't want to live this kind of austere conservative life. This is especially acute for Saudi Arabia: 70% of its population is aged under 35. So this is a generation of consumers born and brought up on Instagram and Snapchat, Netflix, Real Madrid, Juventus, Ferrari, Gucci and Prada and so forth. So, essentially, what the government is now doing is giving to these young people what they want, in return for which the state expects compliance. It expects not to be questioned, it expects this young population to support and uphold the system of government that the country has, at the same time. 

I think you've also got to keep in mind that there is an aspiration for Saudi Arabia's clubs to be ranked in, for example, to the Deloitte Money League, because that brings with it profile, it affects people's perceptions and attitudes towards the country, there is a soft power benefit to it. It confers legitimacy upon those clubs, teams and countries that appear in those league rankings. So I think there's also something to be said about becoming a prominent member of the global sporting community,  because there are significant benefits associated with that.

4- It was quite a season for football in the Gulf area: the Saudis are building a Superleague, Qatar hosted the World Cup and the Emirates won the Champions League. 

We are in the era of state-owned football clubs, therefore we really need to understand the differences between those countries: how is their relation? Are they trying to achieve the same goals? Are they close allies or competing neighbors?

In broad terms, yes, the nations of the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council are broadly trying to achieve the same things: economic diversification and addressing some of the political challenges they face. Also, dealing with some socio cultural issues they have, and equally, trying to obtain other economic benefits such as the generation of export earnings, generation of inward investment, and so forth. 

You have to keep in mind that there are interconnections between them: their ruling families very often have close tribal or familial ties with one another and, and, as with any family, if your brother buys a more expensive car, you might think: well, maybe I will buy a better car. This is a really important aspect of what happens between them and it does dictate that you get these kinds of copying behaviors, they copy each other, not just in football or sport, but more generally. So this kind of copying or mimicry is a feature of the region. 

But are they the same? Actually, no, they're very different. 

You have to  keep in mind that Saudi Arabia, both geographically and in terms of population size, is bigger than the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries put together. A country like Qatar, for example, has a population of 3 million people as opposed to 36 million people in Saudi Arabia, Qatar is largely surrounded by the sea, very small, very vulnerable. Saudi Arabia is much bigger, historically more powerful. So it's really important to keep in mind that whilst there may appear to be some similarities between them, these are actually very different countries geographically, socially, economically, politically. Socially, Saudi Arabia is predominantly inhabited by Saudi Arabian citizens, whereas in Qatar only 10% of the population is made of Qatari citizens. So, the way in which the two countries engage with sport is different, so it's important not to conflate the two of them .

5- Let’s focus now on the biggest player in the political system, despite its historical minor role in football: the United States. After all the rumors about Messi’s transfer to the Saudi Pro League, the Miami deal was unexpected…or wasn’t it? It seems like we need to understand something more about the current relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia.

It might appear quite a simplistic answer, but it's actually quite a profound answer. So it seems that Lionel Messi went to Miami because Mrs. Messi didn't want to go to Riyadh. 

Obviously, such things happen: a family situation, domestic circumstances dictate sometimes where players do go and in the case of Messi, he's a family man. There is a big Hispanic community locally in Miami, it's gonna be much more familiar to the couple. 

This disrupts the race, the issue for Riyadh to be a major global center in football: it does require that people change their attitudes and perceptions towards the country and living in downtown Riyadh is absolutely different to living in downtown Miami. 

The reality is that these differences potentially do create barriers to what Saudi Arabia is trying to achieve. 

If you're trying to attract big players, there may be a certain degree of cultural resistance amongst such players to go and live in these countries. 

About the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, that's an interesting question. 

I don't immediately see anything of specific or of particular relevance in football terms. But I think what's important to keep in mind is that Saudi Arabia is scouting around for investment opportunities. And it could well be that we will see MLS clubs being acquired by the Saudi Arabians, whilst at the same time I know that Saudi Arabia is keen to attract inward investment into Saudi Arabia itself, and it's not entirely impossible that we could see a private equity investor take a stake in a Saudi Arabian club. It's not entirely impossible that we'll see the PIF or one of these other organizations in Saudi Arabian football actually trying to buy a North American sports franchise of some nature. 

6- American investors also backed the European Super League plan.

A judgment from the European Court of Justice is expected by the end of the summer. Do you think it’s still on? Despite the many announcements of plans to pull out, it seems like no club really quitted…

You go back 20 years ago and American private equity investors somehow were seen as they were the evil empire. Yet, nowadays, they've become kind of willing partners. Now, the evil empire is investors from the Gulf region. But I think what unites investors from the Gulf region and private equity investors is they invest in football to serve their own needs.

Both sets of investors are investing in European clubs because they want to achieve their own goals. What I think is really significant about the Americans is they're in this to make money, they're in this to make profit. They're not in this to make a geopolitical point.

So, with that in mind, whilst there is money to be made from football, there will always be the pressure of a Super League. 

The pressure for a Super League comes from the basic tenants, which is that these bigger clubs believe that they're the ones that generate the most wealth for football, they're the ones that people across the world want to watch. They're the ones that are the most commercially lucrative, so therefore they are entitled to a bigger share of the revenues that are generated. 

I guess the apocalyptic scenario for many European football fans is that a Super League could potentially be funded by Saudi Arabia. There are rumors now circulating that Saudi Arabian investors are trying to entice those Superleague clubs to break ranks again and join a league that has been funded by somebody in Riyadh. 

So this is a deeply deeply fractious issue. It remains alive and ongoing. The inconvenient truth for many Europeans is that we might actually not get the outcome that we're looking for. For people who doubt that, look at what happened in golf. You go back three years ago, PGA and DP tour: nothing was ever going to threaten their position. And here we are now: the PGA Tour and the DP tour have just sold themselves to Saudi Arabia.

All those certainties that we used to have about football are rapidly eroding. 

7- The EU governments and the EU Commission backed UEFA on the Superleague case. To many European fans, though, it looks like UEFA is too close to states outside the EU, enemies of European values, namely Qatar and Russia. Nasser Al Khelaifi and Aleksandr Dyukov are part of the UEFA board. Sandor Csanyi, the Hungarian tycoon with close ties to Orban and the Russian government, was vice-president of UEFA under Ceferin and now FIFA. The Albanian member of UEFA Executive Committee, Armand Duka, is also a member of the board of Csanyi’s bank (OTP) in Albania. Is it in Europe's best interest to stay on UEFA’s side?

Europe needs to decide what it wants, full stop. What I find very interesting is most governments across Europe have a very laissez faire approach to football policy and strategy. Governments tend not to get involved, because it can be quite complicated to get involved in football.

In a way, you don't need to, because football kind of runs itself and it's also easier to lose support by interfering in football, than it is to gain support by positively engaging with the sport. So we've got this very laissez faire view of football and this is replicated essentially by the European Union. The EU has got a very small vision of the role that football plays in contemporary European life.

Essentially, European Union sport policy is centered on getting people playing sports because it's a public health intervention. Only secondarily, there's a little bit of interest in governance and there have been some policy statements on the governance of European sport, very often linked to corruption. 

What we don't have from the European Union is a vision of what football's future should look like from a European perspective. 

What we've had now over the last 20 years is European football clubs being sold to Russians, to Qataris, to Saudi Arabians. Nobody across Europe has done anything to stop this, for that matter. Nobody in the European Union has done anything to stop this. We've sold our historic cultural and sporting assets and we've done nothing to stop this. We've not even really talked about whether it's the right thing to do or not. 

In 2008, when Abu Dhabi bought Manchester City, City was 17th in the Deloitte Money League, generating revenues of 100 million euros per year. Now it's number one in the Deloitte League generating revenues of more than 700 million euros. We're not far away from Manchester City generating a billion euros of revenues a year. 

A lot of that will not stay in Manchester, will not stay in Britain, a lot of that will flow back to Abu Dhabi and the British government let that happen. 

The nature of the debate about Manchester City and PSG and all the others, needs to change. We need to stop venerating clubs like PSG and City but at the same time, we need to stop criticizing clubs like PSG and City. Instead, as a European population, we have to engage with the issues and we have to decide what our policies and strategies are to deal with these issues. Because if we don't, more clubs will be sold, more revenues will be lost to non European states around the world that will increasingly accumulate economic and political power. 

There could well be a time at some stage later in the 21st century where for example, FIFA is no longer based in Europe, it has its head office somewhere else in the world. That's how serious this is. 

8- Italy and Spain are football giants, their teams used to dominate the European competitions. Are they too small now, politically speaking, for this new world order? Are they going to decline? Was ESL a possible way to stay at the top for their big teams?

If you go back to the 90s, the English Football Association published a report called the Blueprint for the future of English football. It was essentially a strategic review of English football: it was in a really bad position with hooliganism, decaying infrastructure and the underperformance of its national team. 

This blueprint said essentially two things: create a Premier League and make money. So the Premier League in terms of strategic planning has been not only visionary, but it has achieved exactly what it set out to achieve and I think the Premier League is absolutely a Thatcherite economic incarnation of elite professional football. So Britain has gone through that transformation, it has made the change, and for the Premier League now, the big challenge for is how to sustain its performance in the coming decades. 

What I think is more significant for Spain and Italy is you're just now going through the transformation. And of course, because you're some years behind in making that transformation, you're losing ground.

The government itself has to help sustain these changes.

I don't think the Super League is necessarily the way to go. It's one possible option for Spain and Italy, but there are also domestic options. 

But there are also geopolitical solutions to it and I think the Super Cups that we've seen, be being played in Riyadh this year, the Spanish Super Cup or the Italian Super Cup is evidence that the transformation is being enabled by external influences, most notably Saudi Arabia in this particular case. 

I think it's important to keep in mind the kind of pain and suffering that Spain and Italy are now going through Britain, particularly England, suffered in the 80s and 90s. My view is that Spain and Italy have to remain focused and strategic and it needs good leadership, good management, good monitoring and control. It is a competitive process that will require transformation over years. It'll be interesting for us to have this conversation in 2033 because I think the nature of things would have changed the game. 

9- Germany looks quite the opposite. A political giant, with a pivotal role in the EU, but quite a strange football country, at least from our perspective. Bayern Munich won eleven Bundesliga titles in a row, 20 of the last 27, but still there is a lot of pride in a supposed German egalitarian model of football. Will we see Germany play a pivotal role in European football as well or there is no chance they will abandon their traditional way?

Since Merkel departed, many Europeans are reevaluating the role that Germany does play in Europe. Germany itself is also going through transformation, and is still trying to understand its position in the world. 

Germany very clearly has a particular model of governance, which 10 years ago, many people talked about as being the best way for football to be governed. But now there is an internal debate in Germany about it: is this the right way to do things? Because the “50 plus one” rule on paper might seem like a great idea, but what's happening is the Saudi Arabians, the Chinese and so forth, when faced with this governance model have decided to take their money elsewhere. 

So, someone in Germany is now questioning whether this socially democratic orientation that exists within German football is beneficial.

Is it about money? Or is it about morals? Germany is upholding what we call European liberal values, they seem to be really, really important. In Germany, there is a vehemence about these values that I know that I don't sense in France, when I'm in France, or sense in Britain, when I'm at home in Britain. They exist in Germany. This sort of German socially democratic vision clearly works for Germans, but I think it poses significant questions, which some in Germany are trying to address, in terms of the competitive advantage of the nation and the opportunities it creates within football. Essentially, German clubs, as we know, typically don't have the resources to be able to compete successfully on an ongoing basis. So I think Germany's got questions to answer. The Germany of 20 years ago was big, strong and powerful and very clear about who it is and what it wants. That's not necessarily the case now.

10- Premier League is now the top league in the world but it is also becoming increasingly more predictable. 

Manchester City won five out of the last six titles. Saudi Arabia is ready to splash the cash on Newcastle. State-owned clubs seem to always find a way to distort the competition in their favour. How can the other teams be competitive and turn a profit? Are American investors unhappy with the situation or do you think that the huge EPL revenues will keep everybody satisfied? And why is the UK's government so indulgent with state-owned teams? Shall we know more about UK-Gulf states relations?

What I think is really significant about the UK Government is that during the 1980s Britain was open for business, anything was for sale, you want to buy it, you know, make us an offer, and we'll sell it to you. 

Critics always used to talk about selling off the family silver, to cover debt and that's essentially what Britain did in the 1980s. This kind of Thatcherite economic doctrine continues today, even now. What it means is that, instead of resisting acquisitions by, for example, Gulf states, what the British government will do is it will utilize it for its own purposes. Now, we already see around the world the way in which the British government uses the Premier League for soft power projection purposes. The reality is a lot of the players playing for these teams, a lot of these clubs, they're not British. They're not British, but they are presented as being British by the British government for the purposes of soft power, cutting trade deals and engaging in making trade deals and projecting soft power around the world, displaying the credentials of brand Britain. 

The British government is hugely indulgent of not just state owned foreign investors, but any foreign investors and it has been for the last 40-50 years. 

In Britain's post Brexit era, economic performance is bad, investment levels are low, productivity is low. We've seen the migration of businesses away from the country, Britain needs all the help we can get right now. And if the help comes in the form of Arab investment enabled through the acquisition of a football club, then absolutely Britain will accept that. 

And if you look at the case of Manchester, the urban landscape of Manchester has been transformed by Abu Dhabi money. A lot of the real estate developments taking place in central Manchester right now are funded by the Abu Dhabi government. And the left wing City Council in Manchester has actively sought this out. For the purposes of post Brexit reality, of course, the British government is very happy with the Gulf States and is more than happy to indulge them.

When it comes to handbags, people buy handbags, because they want status, they want style, they want fashion, they want to be seen. There are consumers of football in this globalized world of ours who don't really care about your local working class culture or the history of the club and they don’t care about competitive balance.

They want to engage with a club, they want to engage with players who are glamorous, exciting, sexy, fashionable and successful. And when those players move, funds will follow them to another club that is sexy and fashionable and successful. 

And so again, this is what I meant right at the very start about this global pivot: all those certainties that we had in the past are being eroded. There are people in this world for whom competitive balance is just not important. It's not a factor in their decision to consume a club, a team, a league, a player. And this is one of the realities, I think many of us have got to wake up to:, my team Middlesbrough there's no way in the history of football, we're going to win the Champions League, there's no way that's going to happen. Unless, of course, somebody spends a billion euros on the club, you know, it's just not going to happen. So I understand the competitive balance argument, but people like me are not the people controlling the discussion. We're not the people controlling the discourse. We're not the people controlling the narrative. The world has changed.

11- Last FIFA Congress was held in Kigali, Rwanda, despite controversies about Paul Kagame’s alleged political crimes. Saudi Arabia invested big money in AFC. There is a lot of interest in African football or in the many African votes for assigning the World Cup and electing the president?

I think Rwanda is really interesting because politically Rwanda is trying to present a face of itself that is different to the one of the genocide of the 1990s. One of the ways in which Rwanda is trying to reform and transform is through tourism. 

So this whole thing about “Visit Rwanda” is a tourism campaign that is not about sport washing. It's not about trying to distract attention away from it.

What's really interesting about that is Qatar is making a big play on Rwanda right now. Rwanda has been one of the targets for a legacy project associated with the World Cup. Kigali’s new airport has been essentially gifted to the nation by Qatar by the Qatar Investment Authority. There is some small state diplomacy taking place between Qatar and Rwanda,and it is related to football, tourism, raw materials. Rwanda is a very important country, it's a source of natural resources and countries like Qatar know this. Qatar has engaged with Rwanda, for instance, through football and football diplomacy, for broader purposes than that. 

Saudi Arabia sees itself as an Afro-Eurasian hub. It sees itself as being at the center of a new world order. Take the relationship between, for example, Rwanda and China. Rwanda has the natural resources that China needs. Saudi Arabia is in between them both and wants to position itself as being at the center of a new world order. Football plays an important part of this and what we're seeing Saudi Arabia doing increasingly is deploying a policy of football diplomacy, whereby football is an enabler of geopolitical interests.

What we're hearing about 2030 World Cup, possibly Saudi Arabia bidding with Greece and Egypt, it's an Afro-Eurasian World Cup: this is really important, not just in terms of the image and reputation of Saudi Arabia.

12- FIFA, finally, the government of world football. Gianni Infantino will rule until 2031, as many say? What shall we expect from him?

I think Infantino will still be there. Despite the criticism, you know, I think Infantino is much shrewder than people imagine. People looked at his pre-World Cup speech and concluded that he was mad and it didn't make much sense.

I also think his style of delivery wasn't good, he shouldn't have gone off script like that. However, I do think its central message was a really, really significant, important and deeply profound one: the political power shifting across the world.

Infantino knows that Europe is weaker than it was when the financial crash hit in 2008. The financial crash was really deeply damaging to Europe. Infantino knows this and at the same time, he also knows that China has geopolitical aspirations,  that Saudi Arabia needs to rapidly diversify its economy. So he's very shrewd. He understands the world. 

I also think his manifesto is interesting and his manifesto as FIFA president is exactly the same as the manifesto of Platini, they rolled it out when they were at UEFA together, which is that you don't upset the order of things. 

Infantino says to people: I can't give you a bigger slice of the cake. But what I can do is I can bake a bigger cake. And that's what essentially Infantino is now doing at FIFA. He's maintaining the natural order, but he's saying I can bake a bigger cake and of course, by baking a bigger cake, it means that everybody gets more money. So where does he find the money from? Well, he plays hardball with TV rights deals. At the same time, Infantino is looking for revenues everywhere: Saudi Arabia, China, Qatar, Korea, they are prepared to pay and he will take their money because their money will help him to make good on his manifesto promises.

I think he's actually much shrewder and much more perceptive than many people give him credit for. So yes, absolutely. He'll still be there in 2031. 

12- Will it be the most interesting football summer in history? Shall we expect the unexpected?

It already is the most interesting summer in football history, keeping in mind that it was already hot in Saudi Arabia in January when Ronaldo moved there, now Messi to Miami, Mbappé will probably move, City won the Champions League, potentially United are going to be sold to Qatar. It's entirely possible that we might see Saudi Arabia buy another club in Europe. There have been rumors about Inter Milan and Marseille… The Qataris are looking for minority stakes in other European clubs as well.

So yeah, I agree with you that it could be the most interesting football summer in history. And yes, expect the unexpected, absolutely. Absolutely. Nothing is off the table, anything is possible. And one of the rumors that I'm even hearing is that Saudi Arabians have got the money and they are determined to essentially buy an existing competition and make it their own in football. What that is, I don't know: a sort of Champions League? Who knows? But don't discount anything.