Salvation may still be some time coming at theatre of the absurd
Hdespite the home support’s outpouring of love, Khashoggi protest is a reminder that Saudi takeover leaves an acrid taste
Throughout a day bleakly devoid of irony on Tyneside, the illusion of salvation assumed unusual forms. Just as Newcastle fans sang along to Going Home, Mark Knopfler’s plangent theme tune to Local Hero, they reserved their loudest cheers for His Excellency Yasir Al-rumayyan, newly arrived from Riyadh.
While a Gallowgate End banner proclaimed Jimmy Nail’s homespun philosophy about this being a mighty town built on solid ground, a fan in mock Arabian costume posed with his bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, declaring: “We’re Saudis, we can afford anything.”
Much as the locals crowed, this was an occasion difficult to romanticise. Quite apart from a madcap defeat marked by the usual inept defending, not to mention a medical drama in which the game was suspended for 25 minutes to allow a stricken fan to be treated with a defibrillator, the glorifying of a Saudi takeover that has replaced Mike Ashley with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman left an acrid taste.
And for all those insisting that the Public Investment Fund’s £700billion of sovereign wealth is somehow autonomous of the Saudi state, please spare us the sophistry: Alrumayyan sits on the PIF board presided over by the man known jauntily as MBS. Fortunately, a few courageous souls were on hand to remind us that MBS is not, contrary to the official narrative, a figure of boundless benevolence.
A van circled St James’ Park bearing, at some risk to the driver’s safety, a blown-up portrait of the Washington Post columnist killed, in the judgment of United States intelligence agencies, on the direct orders of the Saudi Crown Prince. “Jamal Khashoggi,” it proclaimed, with Bin Salman’s image in the background. “Murdered 2.10.18.”
Not that some here seemed to care that their club had been acquired by a country complicit in killing a journalist inside an Istanbul consulate and then, according to Turkish sources, dismembering his body with a bone saw.
Instead, they expressed their unconditional love of a regime about which many, until 11 days ago, had not the slightest curiosity.
Proud Geordies held up the darkgreen, sabre-adorned Saudi flag. Fathers and sons mimicked Middle Eastern dress by wrapping themselves in dressing gowns and dishcloths. It all belonged to the theatre of the absurd. It also felt, when juxtaposed with the reminders of Khashoggi, profoundly grim.
For all the emotion coursing through Newcastle’s fan base, and for all the copious investment soon to be made, this is a club caught in limbo. Even on a day for ushering in the new, there was still a pathological obsession with the old. Mike Ashley has gone, banished from Tyneside after 14 years of his detested stewardship, but the abusive chanting remains. So, too, does the Sports Direct branding recalling his parsimonious reign. And so does poor, luckless Steve Bruce, left to serve a lonely touchline vigil for his 1,000th game in management while his own people taunted that he would be sacked in the morning.
There is a reason why Newcastle have commanded a precious place in popular affections, why they briefly became, at the zenith of the Kevin Keegan years, everybody’s second favourite club. It was not so much the vibrancy of their football as the ferocity of their support, the feeling of a one-club city in full cry.
Sadly, the Ashley era has turned a great institution into a place of petty resentments. Bruce, for whom leading Newcastle was his abiding ambition, received a chorus of derision, while Al-rumayyan, a man who has barely set eyes on his £300 million purchase, was applauded to the rafters. Does he truly deserve such cruelty? At least Bruce has never overseen the club being relegated, unlike Alan Shearer or Rafael Benitez. But he is ill suited, clearly, to meet the vastly inflated demands.
Now that Newcastle are a shop window for Saudi rule, there is an expectation that the owners will spend aggressively to put Paris Stgermain and Manchester City, controlled by those upstart Qataris and Emiratis, in their place. Change, as the chaotic fluctuations of this match illustrated, is unlikely to be so seamless. When Callum Wilson buried a Shearer-esque header in the second minute, it looked as if the players would be electrified by the benefactors’ mere presence.
Amanda Staveley leapt for joy in her black-and-white scarf, while Ant and Dec bounced around deliriously on the row in front.
New broom, out with the gloom? These long-suffering supporters should know by now that sporting rebirths are seldom so neat. Sure enough, their team demonstrated why they have still not won in the league this season, with dire defending allowing Tanguy Ndombele and Harry Kane to extinguish the initial surge of happiness. Optimism gave way first to restlessness, then vitriol, then an unsettling silence as the crowd waited for a fan to be dealt with by paramedics after collapsing.
Would this uncomfortable delay be the home players’ cue to regather composure? Not when they were cursed with such chronic incompetence at the back that they enabled Son Heung-min to ghost in unmarked at the far post. Such is Newcastle’s predicament, as an inordinately wealthy club forced to make do and mend until the January transfer window with these shambolic performances. Their fans can don all the sheikh outfits they like, but in the end, not even the most lavish robes can disguise a side painfully lacking in substance.