{"id":1769,"date":"2010-12-13T15:37:29","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T11:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2011-07-16T12:26:49","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T08:26:49","slug":"qatar-foundation-to-sponsor-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-sports-news-and-analysis\/qatar-foundation-to-sponsor-barcelona\/","title":{"rendered":"Qatar Foundation to sponsor Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"highslide\" onclick=\"return vz.expand(this)\" href=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/BarcaRed.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1771\" title=\"BarcaRed\" src=\"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/BarcaRed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"492\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Footballing links between Spain and Qatar continue to build.  Barcelona have announced that the Qatar Foundation will replace UNICEF  as their primary sponsor. QF will pay around $225 million for the  privilege under a newly signed 5 year deal, the most lucrative in  football history.<\/p>\n<p>Barcelona\u2019s manager Pep Guardiola was one of numerous sponsors of  Qatar\u2019s successful World Cup 2022 bid.\u00a0 Spain and Qatar, both bidding for  different World Cups, agreed to block vote for each other though this  was somewhat less successful for Spain.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>This deal comes at an opportune moment for both parties.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For Barcelona, though they have been hugely successful in recent  years, they have a veritable mountain of debt (some \u00a3350million) and  need some cash. For QF and Qatar more generally, they can tie themselves  to one of the greatest football clubs in the world at a peak of their  powers. Barcelona have won stacks of trophies in recent seasons,  destroyed their arch rivals and super-club Real Madrid 5-0 recently and  are universally regarded as playing some of the most beautiful football  ever seen.\u00a0 In their last game, to offer one stat, they passed the ball  more times than any other team in recorded footballing history.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DAVID ROBERTS: Footballing links between Spain and Qatar continue to build. Barcelona have announced that the Qatar Foundation will replace UNICEF as their primary sponsor. QF will pay around $225 million over a 5 year deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":1771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152,7],"tags":[3886,1654,338,18307,2498,2139,3136],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}