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Newcastle United Takeover: How Far is Too Far?

October 15, 2021

We could debate precisely when football sold its soul, but after the recent Newcastle United takeover, one thing is clear: There are no more good guys left in football, just bad ones and worse.

Last week, Mike Ashley sold Newcastle United to a consortium led by British businesswomen Amanda Staveley. The club is now controlled by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, who hold an 80 per cent stake.

The takeover sees the end of Mike Ashley’s tumultuous 14-year ownership of the club, in which the CEO of Sports Direct oversaw two relegations, 12 managerial changes and a club bereft of hope.

In one day, all of that changed. Newcastle United have now become the richest club in the world and their fans rushed to the ground to celebrate, singing to the cameras “We’ve got our football club back”.

 

In a way, they have. Newcastle fans will see their club spend hundreds of millions of pounds on world football’s most exciting talents. They may see Champions League nights return to Tyneside for the first time in almost 20 years. They will dare to dream again, and for football fans, that is more important than anything.

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More important, evidently, than whatever baggage accompanies these riches. Under the rule of the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, basic human rights have been horribly neglected in Saudi Arabia. Bin Salman’s alleged ordering of the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoogi is just the latest in a long line of atrocities committed by the state.

Not that Newcastle fans care, though. In a poll from April 2020, when asked whether Newcastle fans would be in favour of the PIF’s takeover going through, 96.7% were in agreement.

North-East football journalist and author Roger Domeneghetti, shared a strong discomfort for this reality: “I mean, one guy tweeted some of this stuff about, ‘well, we’re not celebrating the Saudis coming in. We’re celebrating the fact that Mike Ashley is gone.’ And I thought, yeah, okay, I get that. But you can’t divorce this.”

Even with full knowledge of the horrendous crimes committed by their potential suitors, these supporters were willing to live with the knowledge they’d forever be associated with that if it meant a crack at winning more football games. But this isn’t a Newcastle fan issue. This is a football issue.

It’s also one that’s existed for decades. “Sportswashing”, (the act of a state or country effectively sweeping human rights atrocities under the carpet by improving their global image through the purchase of a sports team or hosting of a world event.) has been present in football right from the start. For each occasion, fanshave turned a blind eye to the moral side of a takeover, choosing instead to focus their attention on the sporting benefit it will bring them instead.

Even Domeneghetti’s beloved Leicester City, fabled in footballing folklore, are a byproduct of it. “Let’s not forget that Leicester are owned by Thai billionaires. So, this suggestion that Leicester is this tiny little provincial is sort of nonsense? And why did they buy us? They wanted to get their brand King Power onto the global stage, and they saw the Premier League, or English football as a place to do that.”

This even reaches out past takeovers and events, to players. Benjamin Mendy was under police investigation for nine months due to the alleged rape of numerous women. Manchester City, despite knowing full well, decided against suspending Mendy, and played him 18 times in that period, even crowning the fullback with a Premier League winning medal at the end of the campaign.

Yet although football fans are more than happy to look past issues like sexual assault, human rights violations, and racism, what seemingly does cross the line is whatever gets in the way of their football. The rise and fall of the European Super League are ample proof of that. Fans in this country showed so much disgust over a plan that would simply change the way they watched football matches that the whole thing was scrapped in 48 hours. Where’s the same energy now?

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Domeneghetti shares the same sentiment. “You know, this was kind of an inevitable thing. We’ve been incrementally going towards this point. You raise an interesting point, whether we, as a collective will ever reach a point. I don’t know. I’m struggling to see when we would, because you’re right, with the Super League, it kind of affected all of us, didn’t it? If those six clubs went off, you know, then me as a Leicester City fan, Newcastle fans, Leicester fans, we would have all been sort of detrimentally impacted by that.”

I say all this not to shame football fans. We are all hypocrites, and tribalistic ones at that. For many, attending the match or changing your entire work schedule to fit around kickoff time is a regular occurrence, and the sport practically dictates our everyday lives. For that reason, I can’t blame Newcastle or Manchester City fans. The sport is too far gone for that.

What I can and will do though is pose a question I hope all football fans will ask themselves: How far is too far? What will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back that causes us as fans to say, “You know what, no. A Champions League trophy isn’t worth that”?

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Newcastle’s new owners will bring their fans some of the happiest moments of their lives with the investment they will surely make. Wednesday nights in Madrid and title runs with Chelsea will continue to push their atrocities further in the back of everyone’s minds. But when Newcastle players took the knee against racism (an act already labeled virtue signaling by many) last Sunday against Tottenham, how could anyone take the act seriously, when they are now run and funded by a state actively imprisoning and murdering human rights activists?

The excuse will be that this was the only answer after what Mike Ashley put them through. And in a strange way? They’re right. Because in football, there are no good guys and bad guys. There are only bad ones, and worse.