Saudi Sportswashing and the Silence of the Fans

When Saudi Arabia’s men’s football team step out on the pitch to play two friendly matches at Newcastle United’s St James’s Park over the next few days, the results won’t really matter.  

Critics say the despotic regime of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) will already have won, simply by virtue of being allowed to host such prestigious games at a venerated English football stadium.

In the words of campaigner John Hird, the Saudis “are using the city as a giant billboard” in the hope of making the public see it as a major player in global sports, rather than a serial abuser of human rights.

Hird, founder of NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing, is talking to me outside the entrance to the ground, where statues of local heroes Alan Shearer and Sir Bobby Robson stand sentry over the club’s offices.

He views Saudi Arabia’s adoption of Newcastle as a ‘home from home’ for its national side as the latest step in the process of ‘normalising’ its involvement in English football.

Hird’s eyes blaze with indignation as he asks rhetorically: “Can you imagine if Iran asked if they could play two friendlies at Newcastle. Or North Korea? It’s just ridiculous.” 

The difference, of course, is that unlike those two international pariahs, the UK has friendly relations with the Riyadh regime. 

The British Government sells arms to Saudi Arabia, relies on its oil imports, and in an era of increasingly fraught geopolitics, has even invited MBS on a state visit, despite his apparent complicity in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“How he has he got back into the international fold?” asks Hird in a thick Geordie brogue, before rapidly answering his own question. “Mostly because of money and promises of investment.”

When the Saudi Public Investment Fund (or ‘PIF’) bought Newcastle United in 2021, the Premier League’s concerns over its close links with the MBS Government were soothed by “legally binding assurances” that it wasn’t an arm of the state.

Those claims, always flimsy, now look nothing more than an elaborate fiction.

Newcastle’s chairman, Yasir al Rumayya, was described as “a sitting minister of the Saudi Government” with “sovereign immunity” in documents lodged by the PIF in a US lawsuit.   

It’s surely no coincidence that Newcastle’s second kit this season (as well as last year’s third kit) are strikingly similar to those worn by the Saudi national team.  

Then there’s the PIF itself, which is chaired by MBS.

Hird says “it’s not just a dictatorship that runs Saudi Arabia. It’s a royal dictatorship. And who’s the head guy? It’s Mohammed bin Salman. Ipso facto, he controls Newcastle United.

“These binding assurances, saying that the Saudi state wouldn’t control Newcastle United, need to be revisited, because they’re obviously not worth the paper they’re written on.”

The charge sheet against Saudi Arabia is exhaustive. 

According to Amnesty International, individuals are targeted for seeking freedom of expression, and sentenced to death following unfair trials. Political prisoners are tortured; women, migrant workers and minorities are denied their human rights. There’s also strong evidence of Saudi atrocities in its war against Yemen.

Yet Hird has found it hard to get a hearing for his campaign. That’s partly because of the transformational impact of Saudi riches on a club renowned for its perennial under-achievement.