Corrupt money is paying for ‘sportswashing’, but others are paying a price in human misery
WATCHING Sky Sports on Sunday afternoon, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when the French footballer Allan Saint-maximin scored a wonderful goal for his English club, Newcastle United.
The football fan in me was thrilled at this stunning and exciting piece of skill.
But, the partisan nature of my footballing loyalty meant that I was hoping that Newcastle would lose the game, which indeed they were doing until that last minute strike.
It’s not that I dislike Newcastle; far from it. I love the Geordie people and the club is often cited as many people’s second favourite behind their own team. But with new owners now prepared to pump bucketloads of cash into Newcastle United, in time they’ll become another major threat to potentially push the team I support, Tottenham Hotspur, further down the pecking order.
It’s to my shame that my own silly selfish interest in wanting my team to have a better chance to win trophies is the warped reason for wanting Newcastle defeated; and not the fact that they are now owned by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Or more accurately by a fund with links to a Saudi Government with a shocking human rights record.
In a chaotic and violent world, are we so shallow that winning at sport is now more valued than human life? Does the misery inflicted on people by the ruthless power of men who grin for the cameras in the directors box of football stadia not matter to us?
We should be a lot more agitated and bothered by the way the Saudis are “sportswashing”, the current phrase for despots cleansing their reputation by associating themselves with the glamourous image of football and other sports.
Who remembers the journalist Kamal Khashoggi butchered and chopped into pieces by the Saudis, allegedly on the order of the Crown Prince?
And in March this year Saudi Arabia executed 81 men, half of them for taking part in protests in favour of democracy.
Last week a woman was sentenced to 45 years in prison after a special criminal court convicted her of using the internet to criticise Saudi society; and Salma al-shehab, a young PHD student at Leeds University and mother of two children, was sentenced to 34 years in prison after she returned home to Saudi for a holiday break.
Her offences included tweeting in support of another woman who is in prison for defying a ban on women driving.
Nice people, the Saudis.
Newcastle manager Eddie Howe won’t comment about the owners in press conferences. I don’t blame him.
The Newcastle fans seem to care little about where the money is coming from. I don’t blame them either; why should they take lectures from a world where everybody is at it. Money has corrupted the Premier League, skewing all clubs’ morality to a greater or lesser extent.
Manchester City fans are glorying in the wonderful flair of their Pep-inspired team and nobody talks any more about the source of their money in the United Arab Emirates with its unsavoury repression of human rights.
Chelsea fans loved Roman Abramovich for spending his way to the game’s top table, despite resourcing it from money made from Russian state corruption and brutality, and the only reason it all came to an end was that Putin invaded Ukraine and Abramovich was run out of London town. Russian oligarch influence ran so deep into the heart of the political, financial and business establishment that it was nicknames Londongrad.
The irony and hypocrisy!
Russia, literally, bought the right to host the football World Cup in 2018 by allegedly bribing FIFA officials and the people all aghast now didn’t bat an eyelid watching Putin preen himself as he presented the trophy.
And as we settle down to watch the World Cup this Christmas, if you think FIFA agreed to host it in Qatari heat which can reach 50 degrees as well as disrupting the European season, for “footballing reasons” think again.
It’s not just football. Many people giggled at boxer, Anthony Joshua’s bizarre behaviour after he lost his world title at the weekend, but nobody was laughing that he picked up half of the £65 million that Saudi Arabia paid to stage the fight.
Or that before the fight, Joshua said: “I think Saudi’s good. All that allegation stuff, for me, I’m not caught up in any of that stuff.” Hmm….
Golfer Rory Mcilroy has zoomed up in my estimation for his stance in opposing the Saudi-back LIV series where golfers are being paid extraordinary sums of money to boost the Saudi image.
So what’s the difference between Russia and Saudi Arabia?
Perhaps you also think that the worst the United States of America does is to focus too much on the filthy dollar. The Glazers at Manchester United remind me of PT Barnum, a showman in the US in the 19th century. His personal aim was to put as much money as he could into his own account, and he’s credited with coining the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
It’s a disgrace that the Glazers, who could probably teach Barnum a trick or two in today’s world of high finance, treat the Man United fans as cannon fodder for their bank accounts.
But the United States has a disregard for human life when it suits; their troubled history from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo Bay, sees abuses and mistreatment including bombing schools and social occasions are justified in the name of war.
And the west cosies up to the Saudis because they’ve got oil at a time when it’s not acceptable to use Russian energy. Violence and a disregard for people’s lives are commonplace across a terrible world.
As somebody once said “Wanna see how people really are? Wait till money is involved” and it’s surely true that the love of money is the root of all evil. Note, not money, but the love of money.
Money leads to power, and power corrupts; and “sportswashing” is designed to make us look away from the death, suffering and misery that they are inflicting on poor and vulnerable people in plain sight. And as long as our team gets three points on Saturday, we do look away.
But our silence is deafening.
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Golfer Rory Mcilroy has zoomed up in my estimation for his stance in opposing the Saudi-back LIV series
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Her offences included tweeting in support of another woman who is in prison for defying a ban on women driving