Fresh revelations concerning Saudi Arabia’s purchase of Newcastle United three years ago emerged on Monday. The fact that they appeared to confirm the direct involvement of the kingdom’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in the takeover will have come as little surprise to anyone.
Some of the details in the leaked cache of WhatsApp messages were rather amusing. The suggestion that Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, who have been directors’ box guests of the new regime at St James’s Park, were recruited as Saudi stooges to promote the takeover, is a vignette to be met with hollow laughs.
The pressure heaped upon the Premier League by the British government of the day to force the takeover through has been in the public domain for some time but the lobbying of Lord Grimstone, the then minister for investment whose name is straight out of Nicholas Nickleby, provides more hints of interference in football from above.
With every month that passes, the selling of the club’s soul to one of the most repressive states in the world and the havoc it has wrought on Premier League clubs now at war with each other, looks more and more like the trigger for a sorry descent into English football’s deep well of dystopia.
It is hard not to feel some sympathy for a Newcastle fanbase that has been starved of success for so long, that has supported its team so loyally and which was so desperate for success that some were prepared to ignore Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record when they realised they were to become the club with the richest owners in world football.
With every month that passes, the sale of Newcastle to one of the most repressive states in the world, looks more and more like the trigger for a descent into English football’s well of dystopia
Fresh revelations concerning Saudi Arabia’s purchase of Newcastle United three years ago emerged, which suggested the involvement of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
A more limited section of supporters, typically active on social media, have become enthusiastically aggressive apologists for an autocratic regime, which treats women as second-class citizens, has a predilection for mass executions, murders journalists in cold blood and outlaws freedom of expression and same-sex relationships.
Some of the local media have been compromised: Sky Sports’ reporters in the north-east, in particular, stood out for their sycophantic coverage of the Saudi takeover. They stopped short of wearing tea towels on their heads in imitation of a keffiyeh, as some supporters did. But sometimes it felt as if that prospect was only a beat away.
And for what? Three years after the takeover, Newcastle United is looking more and more like Saudi Arabia’s forgotten project.
If the club has not been abandoned, then it has certainly been moved quietly into the shadows and allowed to atrophy. When the takeover was completed, Amanda Staveley, the dynamic and charismatic businesswoman who brokered the deal between the Saudis and the previous owner, Mike Ashley, boasted that Newcastle would win the Premier League in the next five to 10 years.
‘We are bloody loaded,’ an article in The Mag, a Newcastle supporters’ fan site, said a couple of years ago, ‘with owners who are not here for one afternoon and the Carabao Cup. When Amanda Staveley says Newcastle United will win the Carabao Cup, the FA Cup, the European Cup and the Premier League, it’s not some knee jerk reaction, it’s simply stating a fact.’
Staveley has gone now, of course, and her promises have gone with her. Even though the fans are still being told to believe that the Saudis have not lost interest, the facts are not particularly reassuring.
When the takeover was completed, Amanda Staveley (pictured) boasted that Newcastle would win the Premier League in the next five to 10 years
Newcastle looks like an afterthought in the Saudi sporting empire these days. All the big money is going on the LIV Golf project and, increasingly, fabulous levels of investment in taking over the world of boxing.
It appears that tennis is the next frontier. Last weekend, Riyadh hosted the Six Kings Slam for a host of elite players with prize money that dwarfed the rewards on offer at Wimbledon, Roland Garros, Flushing Meadow and Melbourne.
In football, the Saudis, to their credit, are concentrating on trying to boost their own domestic league, the Saudi Pro League, with more and more signings to bolster the initial flurry of talent that saw Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar signed up.
Beyond that, Saudi Arabia seems almost certain to be the venue for the 2034 men’s football World Cup, the ultimate prize in the determined effort to push the kingdom into the mainstream and reduce its reliance on oil. Besides that, the Newcastle project pales into insignificance.
In the headlong hurry of Saudi spending, Newcastle appear to have been all but forgotten. Some blame the disinterest on the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR), which have prohibited the kind of transfer business Newcastle fans were anticipating when the Saudis bought the club.
That does not explain, though, why there has been so little investment in, say, the club’s training ground, which has seen some improvements but hardly the lavish changes that so many other clubs have made to their facilities.
And and Dec were reportedly asked to share an article about support for the Saudi Arabian takeover of Newcastle – and their Twitter account obliged within four minutes
It appears that tennis is the next frontier for sport in Saudi Arabia after, last weekend, Riyadh hosted the Six Kings Slam for a host of elite players
There is still talk of covert visits from Saudi delegations to the north east and there are ongoing discussions about the future of St James’ Park and whether to embark on developing the current stadium or moving to a new site. The owners, though, have not been in a rush to turn Newcastle’s home into the state-of-the-art arena that many assumed they desired.
Eight of Newcastle’s squad for the home game against Brighton on Saturday – which Newcastle lost – were players manager Eddie Howe inherited and six of the eight played in the game. So much for the galactico era in the north east that was widely predicted when the Saudis arrived to so much fanfare.
It is not all gloom and doom. Thomas Tuchel’s appointment as England manager means that Howe, who has done such a fine job at Newcastle, will probably not be poached by anyone any time soon. And even if Newcastle’s next two league games are against Chelsea and Arsenal, they have an easier run of fixtures in the build-up to Christmas.
Gone are the days of not so long ago when they spent seasons haunted by the fear, or the reality, of relegation. With a fair wind, they’ll finish in the top half of the table next May. Maybe they’ll have a run at a cup. It’s just that none of it is quite the way it was supposed to be.
It is not all gloom and doom. Thomas Tuchel’s appointment as England manager means that Eddie Howe (pictured) will probably not be poached by anyone any time soon
The betrayal of fans is all about greed
It is only a matter of time, as I have written here before, until Premier League owners get their way and stage a regular season game – or several of them – abroad.
There are reports that Barcelona and Atletico Madrid will play their LaLiga match, scheduled for the weekend before Christmas, not in Spain but in Miami. It will not be long before English clubs, emboldened by greed, try to pull the same stunt. My cousin, who has been a New England Patriots season ticket holder for 20 years, flew over from Boston to watch his team play the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley on Sunday and I went along with him.
My cousin thoroughly enjoyed it but he spent parts of the game puzzling over the rather sedate atmosphere. If this had been a game in Foxborough, he kept saying, it would have been a hell of a lot noisier.
Because, even though it was technically a Jaguars’ home game, there were more Patriots fans in the stands. Any afternoon watching sport is an afternoon well spent but the experience did nothing to change my view that league matches – NFL, Premier League, NHL, NBA, La Liga, whatever – should be played in front of their own supporters at their own stadiums, not exported to foreign fields. Any league game played abroad is a betrayal of that club’s fans.
Barcelona’s LaLiga match against Atletico Madrid could take place at the Hard Rock Stadium
Will Bellingham change his ways?
After the European Championship final in Berlin last summer, Jude Bellingham made a point of talking to the Spanish media in the mixed zone in the tunnel underneath the Olympic Stadium and then walked straight past the English media.
I am aware only journalists – and only journalists like me – care about such trifles but I wondered then if he really thought the Spanish press were kinder, gentler beasts than their English counterparts.
Maybe now they are turning on him in Madrid, and he is still lionised in his home country, he will think again.