Why wouldn’t Al-Rumayyan, the club’s chairman, want to revel in ending a 70-year domestic trophy drought for one of the country’s best-followed clubs? He had paid for it, after all.
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And there Al-Rumayyan was, the giant staff photo on the Wembley pitch, Eddie Howe, the manager, out so far right you can barely see him, Al-Rumayyan front and centre, fist raised, inches away from the trophy, the backdrop thousands of Newcastle fans with scarves, provided by Saudi club sponsor Sela, held aloft.
Pointing out the links between Newcastle’s chairman and the repressive Middle Eastern regime he works for, is not designed purely to dismiss the feelings of ecstasy and relief that swept from the thousands of fans in the stadium to the black-and-white city 250 miles away in the North-east.
For decades nobody really discussed where all the money came from that Roman Abramovich spent on Chelsea, even though his Wikipedia page has an entire section devoted to “controversies”.
Three years after selling the club and insisting he would claim none of the proceeds for himself, the £2.5bn remains frozen in a bank account, having helped no Ukrainian victims of war.
Slightly more was said about Manchester City’s owners – but it took years for the message from human rights groups to sink in that the Abu Dhabi takeover was a sportswashing project for a country that exploits migrant labour and imprisons critics.
Al-Rumayyan poses for a photo with Newcastle’s assistant manager Jason Tindall (Photo: Getty)
It’s all been too little, too late. Or maybe futile all along.
And all signs point to this being the start of a new dawn at Newcastle, rather than a club punching upward about to be jabbed to bits by rivals above signing all their best players, as is often the case in moments like this.
Afterwards, Howe, carrying the mantle for English coaches everywhere, described it as a “stepping stone”. Their world-leading striker, Alexander Isak, said it was “really just the start”.
This is not to blame them, either – they are merely parts of an accepted system. If it was not them, it would only be someone else.
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Winning silverware will only add to the Kingdom’s appetite for more. Those pictures and videos, of a senior Saudi official being revered on the turf at the national stadium, is a priceless return on investment.
You can see why. It’s probably more favourable to wake up to stories of your work ending decades of heartbreak for supporters, than to claims about sportswashing.
They have recruited brilliantly, of course; something City are sometimes not given enough credit for while everyone focuses on the money thrown around.
A Carabao Cup trophy will be nothing by comparison: those title celebration pictures and social media video clips will be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
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