Yasir Al-Rumayyan, Chairman of Newcastle United F.C. (Credit: by Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty)
The defining images of the day were those of Newcastle fans weeping, a familiar sight for those acquainted with one of football’s longest-running back-stories. Newcastle fans shed tears when they threw away a 12-point lead at the top of the Premier League in 1996, and they shed tears when coming away from Wembley final after Wembley final well beaten and goalless. But this time it was different; this time they were tears of joy. There was Alan Shearer dancing an uncharacteristic merry jig; Ant embracing Dec while the music of Sam Fender, a diehard Magpie, blasted out on the PA; and an elderly gentleman, not quite old enough to remember the last time Newcastle won a domestic trophy, sobbing quietly.
It had been 70 years since that FA Cup victory in 1955, 70 years in which a once-mighty club had swapped trophies for atrophy. It was a story all the more poignant for it mirroring the simultaneous industrial decline of the city and region. And now the story had a happy ending.
This is a city whose football club is its spiritual heart. Walk out of Central Station and you will see St James’ Park, a vertiginous and imposing old stadium, towering over you. In Newcastle, the club is at the centre of civic life. As Wembley basked in the glow of regional pride, one could imagine Sir Bobby Charlton, his brother Jack, his uncle Jackie Milburn as well as the likes of Sir Bobby Robson, English football legends all, looking down with pleasure. Nobody could have appreciated this victory more than Newcastle United fans. Only an extreme curmudgeon, or a Sunderland fan, would have remained unmoved.
We might never know whether the news of Newcastle’s win reached Malaz Prison, in Riyadh. Here, the fitness instructor Manahel al-Otaibi is serving 11 years, some of it in solitary confinement, for opposing male guardianship, campaigning against the hijab, and, according to her prosecutors, “going to the shops without wearing an abaya, photographing this, and publishing it on Snapchat”.
So much for the reforms promised by Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince. MBS. His close ally, Yasir al-Rumayyan, is the governor of the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund and the chairman of Newcastle United. As al-Otaibi sat in jail, al-Rumayyan lifted the League Cup.
It is an uneasy contrast, and the imprisonment of al-Otaibi is only one example of the MBS regime behaving barbarically. Take the dismemberment, in 2018, of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi: an operation approved, according to the USA’s Director of National Intelligence, by MBS. Or the 2017 “Sheikh-down”, when the nation’s billionaires and captains of industry were corralled into Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton hotel. Amid accusations of abuse and torture, they handed over their assets and paid fines to the state, now embodied by its Crown Prince, in return for their freedom.
Al-Rumayyan is the Crown Prince’s henchman in matters of sport, in which the Saudis are heavily invested. There is the LIV golf tour, viewed by critics as a hostile takeover of the sport, and there was the successful bid to host the 2034 Football World Cup. The kingdom has thrown money at the Saudi Pro League, signing expensive luminaries such as Cristiano Ronaldo, and has hosted numerous boxing world title fights and Formula 1 Grands Prix. One of MBS’ ambitions appears to be that young Saudi nationals — 60% of the population is under 30 — consume sport as a quasi-religion, it being a safer opiate than the extreme Islam that forged the nation’s most famous citizen, Osama bin Laden. Adherents of this kind of worldview might ask awkward questions about the legitimacy of the al-Saud dynasty.
Given that all this is taking place in a faraway land over which we have little influence, it is hard for football fans to know what to feel. Is the appropriate response revulsion at the sight of another British cultural institution being hawked to the highest bidder, regardless of human rights concerns, as the nation accepts its status as a post-imperial supplicant? Or should fans accept that they can’t change these circumstances and allow themselves to revel in a glorious sporting storyline?
Understandably, most Newcastle fans settle for the latter. A few, including the lifelong fan John Hird, have set up a campaign group called NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing, which campaigns for al-Otaibi and the like. The group holds vigils outside St James’ Park – vigils that are often lonely.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is playing a central role in current geo-political stakes. Last week, in the run-up to the final, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, was meeting Mohammed bin Salman, and Saudi Arabia was hosting talks between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Ukraine delegation. The Saudis, in short, were brokering peace between Russia and the West. In that context, the Carabao Cup seems a tiny footnote in the kingdom’s broader project.
In keeping with this central role for Saudi, President Trump directed his first phone call after his election victory to MBS. Trump’s first foreign trip, as it was in 2017, is likely to be to Riyadh. The world genuflects at the court of MBS, including the former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister, who visited in December, has said his “No 1 mission is for economic growth and for that we need Saudi Arabia”. Indeed we do, especially in a volatile world of Trumpian tariffs and a downgraded economic forecast from the OECD.
Newcastle fans, though, have been burdened with the outsourced moral angst of a nation. Governments can sup with the Saudis with near-impunity, but football is held to a higher standard, castigated when it joins the gold rush to Riyadh. Naturally, Newcastle fans resent those questioning their joy. The country accepts Saudi money for its regeneration projects in the north of England, clean energy investments and stakes in Uber, Heathrow and Selfridges. Newcastle United happens to be the most visible target.
Newcastle City Council, controlled by Labour until a spate of resignations last November, recently met ALQST, a Saudi-focused human rights organisation. But we shouldn’t expect the council to issue excoriations of the city’s new overlords. Aside from needing the votes of Newcastle United fans, the council is hoping that the Saudi state might emulate what Abu Dhabi did in east Manchester when the emirate bought Manchester City. The area around the City of Manchester Stadium has been transformed: new housing, a health centre, and sports facilities, as well as the Co-op Live Arena. The projected PIF takeover of Newcastle Airport may be the first local dividend outside of the football club.
Five years ago, when campaigners tore down the statue of slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol, many cheered, not least those on the Left concerned with human rights. It is easy to be clear-sighted, 300 years later, about the awful contradiction of taking money from slavers to build wonderful churches, schools and civic amenities; it is harder to turn down Saudi money now. That money might improve the lives of ordinary people and regenerate the local economy – just as Colston’s money once did in the South-West.
Though Britain can seem a mere vassal state, the relationship isn’t quite as clear-cut as it appears. In his book States of Play, Miguel Delaney quotes the human rights activist Iyad el-Baghdadi on MBS. “He wants to be loved. And he wants his image [as a reformer] back.” Another campaigner told me: “The Saudi authorities really don’t like it when you write about human rights issues. They want to be seen as reformers.”
Therein lies the contradiction. Saudi Arabia looks to Mecca in its prayers, but for investment assets and a degree of approval, it looks to London, New York and Paris. This approval is the only leverage that remains. Resisting the lure of Saudi money is like shouting at the moon: all well and good for purists, but ineffectual. Newcastle fans, being impotent, have little option other than to enjoy their moment. But our society should ask tougher questions of the Saudis, and we should not give in to the temptation to ignore the kingdom’s manifold human rights abuses. It is that Saudi longing for approval that provides the best hope of change.
In a sober moment, after the cup final hangovers have faded, perhaps we can remind ourselves that we have been here before. Not so long ago, we embraced an exciting geopolitical and trade partner. Its leaders’ henchmen were investing in football clubs and transforming London’s economy. That President Putin seemed such a nice chap.
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SubscribeJamal Khashoggi was a Muslim Brotherhood operative years before he got a position on the Washington Post. Only after acknowledging that history is it OK to describe him as a journalist, however horrible his killing in Istanbul.
“But our society should ask tougher questions of the Saudis, and we should not give in to the temptation to ignore the kingdom’s manifold human rights abuses.” Wonderful sentiment – but that is all it is. Just how does the author propose that “our society” should ask these questions? I suspect that most English football clubs would jump at the chance to enjoy the money and success enjoyed mainly by Manchester City, on the long established principle that money does not smell.
Sad but true. As a practice, fans have to ignore the uglier side of the business of sports. At an administrative level, if business is not self-sustaining, you seek investors. I think there’s scope for being judicious about whom you on board.
Far reaching and facinating thoughts on the dicotomies of the sports investment opportunities versus the hand wringing.of the moral costs.
We’ve seen what happens when hand-wringing moralising is used to start military campaigns, in Iraq and Afghanistan for instance.
What comes across in this article is the same mindset, as if ‘doing something’ about the activities of foreign businesses/governments whose investments in the UK is going to result in better outcomes for either their, or our own, citizens.
Absolutely, we can abhor the imprisonment of citizens for what looks like simply trying to exert their own human rights. But in practice, changing that isn’t going to happen by anything other than time, patience and being strong enough within ourselves to change the economic circumstances whereby the influx of money from regimes with different cultural and religious outlooks becomes far less important.
you’re missing the point. as well as football clubs, they also invest heavily in the Wahabi mosques proliferating around the country, including Finsbury Park. you know the ones? the ones that breed the stabby stabby, exploding backpack, groomer types?
They were bought for the pleasure and disposal of a man who approves murder, torture and execution.
The club can never be the same again. Even when the islamists get tired of it and let it go, the craven and slavering welcome given to people who openly loathe those who put out the welcome mat has seen to that.
Their chairman is an “instrument of the Saudi State” according to the PIF. They play in Saudi Arabia colours at away games. They have been on “visits” to Saudi Arabia. They use Saudi Arabian blood money to buy shiny new players.
Saudi Utd indeed. Where once there was a club representing the region, they are now a mere plaything and a PR tool for a monster.
I’ve been a Newcastle fan since my father first took me to SJP when I was 12. That was 70 years ago. Burdened by angst? Not me. I do sometimes feel shame when a foreigner tells me they’ve read something in The Guardian and I cringe that they could imagine that foul organ of bias and hate represents the opinions of British people, but over Saudi investment in NUFC? Not likely. Not when I remember who had it before.
Is a society that empowers and enables genocidaires, on the false premise that they are not terrorists, fit to ask any question?
When soccer stadiums are referred to as The Emirates or The Etihad to outsiders, it seems a bit late in the game to worry about wealthy Arab influence. As it is, a sample of what is happening ‘over there’ is rearing its head over here with the Islamic invasion you folks are experiencing.
I wonder what the relationship is between the increasing Islamification of the UK and the increasing investment from Islamic nations? That seems like a more fruitful line of inquiry than this one.
The FA did try to upset the sale of NUFC to PIF, but failed. It seems, like many people, Rob does not like the idea of investment in the North of England at all. Certainly successive governments have failed to do so. As an example, the money that could have spent wisely on improvement to the rail system in the North, spaffed on that boondoggle HS2.
Wouldn’t surprise me if Rob here is himself a Red. He writes for the Graun after all.
An excellent piece, many thanks – worth my £5 a month!
Regarding Colston’s defenestration, I noted the various Art establishments (V&A for one) who apologise for their old links to tobacco – and yet take the Sackler dollars…