Fink: Becks and the Qatar question

By Jesse Fink

So David Beckham is donating his "huge" Paris Saint-Germain playing salary to a children's charity.

A wonderful gesture from a good man worth applauding.

If only more footballers did the same maybe the world would be a much nicer place.

But, given the French club's owner is Qatar Sports Investments, the club's president is a close friend of the head of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, the club's sponsor is the Qatar Tourism Authority and the player himself was recently offered a massive deal to play in the Qatar Stars League, the question needs to be asked: Will the man who did such a sterling job promoting England 2018 be expected to fall in line with the Qatar 2022 cause?

Moreover, will he?

Recently Britain's The Sun newspaper speculated as much when Beckham was linked to playing in Qatar: "A lucrative, long-term PR role as an ambassador for the Qatar 2022 World Cup could also follow for the ex-England skipper."

Then there is the odd business of UEFA president Michel Platini who voted for Qatar when he was expected to vote for the United States.

Since then, as American writer Bill Archer said in his blog for Big Soccer this week: "Qatar has purchased PSG and is spending money on them like a merchant seaman on shore leave (see: Beckham, David) and launched beIN Sport in France, going from not existing at all in mid-2011 to now owning the broadcast rights to Ligue 1 and - quelle surprise! - Platini's own UEFA Champions Cup and Europa Cup matches."

He neglected to mention Platini's son Laurent works for Qatar Sports Investments.

Platini has strenuously denied any impropriety in his vote for Qatar.

In football media circles there is a pejorative term for cheerleaders - sorry, ambassadors - of the Qatar 2022 World Cup: "Team Qatar".

Team Qatar includes football politicians, former and current players, journalists that write pro-Qatar copy, academics and anyone else deemed valuable to Qatar's PR cause.

Some appear on committees or as guest speakers at conferences in Doha.

Others have links to "thinktanks" and academic institutions. Many more do their bidding for Qatar via less transparent means, keeping a vigilant watch on commentators that present a clear and present danger to the Qatari cause and trying to crush any dissent via social media.

Human Rights Watch's report on the exploitation of migrant workers in the Gulf state, which warned Qatar 2022 would be "a crucible of exploitation and misery" for workers from the subcontinent, is exactly the bad press Team Qatar is being enlisted to nullify.

When Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation says stuff like, "More workers will die building World Cup infrastructure than players will take to the field", the PR machine of Team Qatar kicks into overdrive.

Qatar cannot and will never convince the world that FIFA's decision to award it the World Cup was the right one because, well, it patently wasn't.

But that won't stop it from trying through its collection of stooges and a good old-fashioned money splash.

One can only hope Becks' arrival in Paris was to help PSG win football matches, not to aid the other one being played off the pitch.

Thankfully the hearts and minds of football fans aren't bought that easily.