With PSG reaching a first ever Champions League final, the way in which they have reached the biggest stage in European football has now been placed under greater scrutiny.
The French club have bought their way to the top, spending an incredible amount of money to buy some of the biggest names in world football. All of this has been done with the backing of the Qatari state.
The ethics behind a football club essentially being run by a state or one thing, but the conversation is taken in a different direction when that state has the human rights record of Qatar.
It has been suggested that Qatar are using their ownership of PSG to lighten their image around the globe.
Appearing on Virgin Media ahead of tonight's final, Brian Kerr brilliantly summed up the potential ethical questions behind such ownership groups.
"All around the world, from many different countries, rich regimes of dubious nature have got involved in football clubs.
"There doesn't seem to be any stop to it, there doesn't seem to be any rules to prevent it happening."
Brian Kerr on PSG's ownership.#UCL | #UCLfinal pic.twitter.com/CyOdpNUD5I— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) August 23, 2020
It's all around football, different regimes. We saw the most recent one with the Saudi Arabian regime trying to take over Newcastle and their supporters didn't have any problems with it.
There doesn't seem to be any great debate amongst government or politicians about it either. All around the world, from many different countries, rich regimes of dubious nature have got involved in football clubs.
There doesn't seem to be any stop to it, there doesn't seem to be any rules to prevent it happening...
The Qatari one has been going on for ten years now since the French government and Michel Platini backed Qatar to get the World Cup. They were also involved with providing assistance for the Qatari regime to get hold of PSG.
That started ten years ago, they were also awarded the World Cup to everyone's major surprise. We're still surprised that it's going to happen.
He went on to discuss the some of the questions that have been raised about Qatar's human rights record.
Kerr is against such ownership groups, but he isn't exactly a huge fan of the way Bayern Munich conduct their business either.
While there are no ownership issues, he feels the way they bully other clubs within Germany should be questioned.
Bayern Munich have been a club with plenty of money who have been able to pick and choose players from whatever club in Germany whenever they like.
We see that in the results. What are they on now, eight championships in a row?
Leipzig have come along and some people don't like that a drinks company is ploughing money into Leipzig. But what's so wrong about a drinks company ploughing money into a football club? I don't see the difficulty with that.
But I do have a difficulty with Bayern Munich being able to take the best players of all the other teams that they are competing with.
The game is rampant with this sort of stuff.
