UEFA Champions League: PSG vs. Manchester City — For Qatar and UAE, soccer investment has been ‘potentially worth its weight in gold’

The arrival of these owners has undoubtedly changed both teams’ fortunes. City is on course to win a fifth Premier League title under the ownership of ADUG, a private investment company owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, while PSG has won seven of the last eight league titles in France after Qatar Sports Investments purchased the club in 2011.

But neither has been able to match that domestic success with European silverware. The Champions League, a competition comprising of teams from across Europe, is considered the pinnacle of club football, and last year’s champion Bayern Munich earned €19 million ($23 million) from winning the final alone.

“In future we might look back and think: What took them so long?” Ulrichsen adds. “Whoever wins this match, if they go on to win the Champions League, I think this could be one of those turning points that only becomes fully apparent after the fact.”

Competing in the Champions League semifinals for the second time since ADUG’s takeover, victory in this year’s competition would be a significant landmark for City’s owners.

Their ambitious project has seen the club become the centerpiece of City Football Group, a global network of associated clubs established by ADUG in 2013, and investment has funded a new academy stadium and training facilities around the Etihad Stadium in east Manchester.

You don’t need to look far in the Premier League to recognize how the UAE, a small Middle East nation of close to 10 million people, is making its mark on English football.

“When in the past people would have talked about going to (City’s) Maine Road or to (Arsenal’s) Highbury, it’s now going to the Etihad or the Emirates — it’s entered the very dictionary of football fans,” says Ulrichsen.

“I mean, that’s free advertising, which is potentially worth its weight in gold. And you can’t really quantify it. I mean, you talk about going to the Etihad the same way you talk about going to Old Trafford.”

When it comes to PSG, Ulrichsen notes that the club’s Qatari ownership is not as closely tied to the country’s political leadership as Man City is with the UAE, where Sheikh Mansour is minister of presidential affairs and deputy prime minister.

But Qatar’s investment in football — through PSG, sponsorship deals, and, most recently, its hosting of the 2022 World Cup — has also been a means of raising the country’s profile.

“What both countries have done is to build visibility, to build a profile, to build a reputation, to establish associations in the minds of people across the world with the countries through football,” Simon Chadwick, director of the Centre for Eurasian Sport Industry at Emlyon Business School in France, tells CNN Sport.

Over time, investment yields rewards. Chadwick adds: “The profile, the image, the reputation, the nation branding — this is all part of the ROI, the return on investment, from spending on football in the first place.

“Connected to that obviously is the soft power effect. And the soft power effect means that people outside the region will look towards the region in a more positive way and will be attracted by what the region is trying to do … that has an impact upon diplomacy as well.”

“They reconciled in January, but there are still a lot of needles between the two countries,” Neil Quilliam, associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the think tank Chatham House, tells CNN Sport.

“The competition between the two really plays out literally on the football field. They’ve taken it from a real competition in the region — where one state is blockading another — to having this semifinal where you’ve got both sides facing off, essentially, for a place in the final. There’s some real drama and politics to that.”

Attention can now turn to the final stages of this season’s Champions League, with Real Madrid and Chelsea playing out a 1-1 draw in the first semifinal on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, one club’s ownership will take a step towards winning the trophy both have chased for the past decade.