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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Source: UnHerd Read the original article here: https://unherd.com/
