The latest Newcastle story doesn't say much for any form of existing football governance
The secret to good comedy is timing, but the laughter at the timing of the release of the story concerning Newcastle's chairman was exasperated, rather than delighted.
There truly is no substitute for good timing in comedy. As representatives from the EFL and the Premier League sat before the Department for Culture, Media and Sport arguing about how much money the former should or shouldn’t give the latter, the chairman of a football club whose sale was probably the most contentious in the history of English football was reported as being on the end of a lawsuit in the USA alleging exactly the sort of behaviour which behind so many concerns that they shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near one of our clubs in the first place.
The article, published on Tuesday afternoon on The Athletic, reported that a lawsuit has been served to St James’ Park against the Newcastle chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan in which the allegation is made that Al-Rumayyan, who also acts the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), among others, was “directly involved” in a campaign between June 2017 and January 2021 against Saad Aljabri, a former major-general, minister of state and long-time adviser to deposed Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef in Saudi Arabia. Aljabri has been living in exile in Canada since May 2017, with his family. The proposed case against Al-Rumayyan accuses both the Newcastle chairman and Mohammed Al-Sheik, another PIF board member and a Saudi Minister of State, of “direct” involvement in a lengthy list of allegations, including:
Taking steps to orchestrate an alleged campaign which included “wrongful kidnapping and detention”.
The “misappropriation of property”.
The “expropriation” of companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars into the hands of the PIF.
It is alleged that this was done for “political reasons” at the behest of the Crown Prince Mohhamed Bin Salman (“MBS”). Bin Nayef was deposed as heir to the Saudi throne by MBS in a 2017 coup and has been in detention since 2020. The cover given for this was ‘anti-corruption’. In the autumn of 2017 hundreds of the richest Saudi individuals, including members of the royal family and ministers, were locked in at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh and accused, all of which resulted in billions of dollars’ worth in assets being absorbed into the Saudi state. There have been multiple reports alleging coercion and physical abuse, citing witnesses who claimed individuals were hospitalised, and even that one died in custody.
In accordance with this “anti-corruption” line, In January 2021 a collection of Saudi state-owned firms claimed in a lawsuit issued in Canada that Aljabri had embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds intended for counter-terrorism while working at the interior ministry. Aljabri denies this.
This lawsuit came 18 months after Aljabri submitted another lawsuit in the USA, alleging that a “hit squad” had been dispatched to murder him in Canada in October 2018, the same month that the journalist Jamal Khasoggi was murdered and dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. It has been claimed that this was a direct order from MBS. Aljabri later claimed that those sent to carry out this hit were detained and deported in Ottawa. In addition to this, in November 2020 a Saudi court sentenced Aljabri’s son Omar to nine years in prison and daughter Sarah to six-and-a-half-years, without being granted the opportunity to be present or cross-examine witnesses, on charges of financial crimes and conspiracy to escape the kingdom unlawfully.
While none of this is strong look for the Saudis—you have to read between the lines a little, but it may be telling that both the Canadian authorities and politicians in the USA haven’t dismissed Aljabri’s allegations out of hand—it might be argued that, having allowed them in in the first place, the inner machinations of the Saudi state are none of football’s business.
But that isn’t really why this matters. What matters is that the involvement of Yasir Al-Rumayyan only adds to the body of evidence which debunks the notion that there are any degrees of separation between the Saudi government and its PIF. This came on top of a court case in the USA involving the LIV Golf Tour in which the PIF and Al-Rumayyan were described as “a sovereign instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a sitting minister of the government”.
When finally approving the takeover of the club in 2022, the Premier League’s CEO Richard Masters confirmed that the league had “received legally binding assurances that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not control Newcastle United”. They wouldn’t say what these “legally binding assurances” were, who they were made by, or what the consequences might be if this turned out to be less than true, and it wasn’t even clear how “legally binding assurances” that actually meant anything even could be made under UK law.
The matter is further complicated by the persistent suggestion that the British government itself exerted substantial pressure on the Premier League to approve the takeover, including reports that then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s chief strategic advisor Sir Edward Lister sought to find a “senior interlocutor to impress the interests” of the government upon the Premier League.
But the laughter which has accompanied this reporting hasn’t been in delight, more in exasperation. The number of people—who weren’t Newcastle United supporters—who actually bought this story about “legally binding assurances” was extremely low. Eyebrows shot through the roofs upon this announcement being made in the first place, and there has been little evidence that hasn’t supported such scepticism since, with the primary defence of it really amounting to little more than ‘trust me, bro’.
And although the bind in which the Premier League found itself over this matter is clear, this growing body of evidence only seems to reinforce the belief that the League simply either lied or—and we should remember that even this would be at best—were woefully naive in accepting that there was a degree of separation between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Newcastle United. Certainly, there has been little evidence of this since the Premier League’s final decision was confirmed.
Considering that no-one seems to give a damn about the treatment of LGBTQ+ people in Saudi Arabia, political repression there or other human rights, including those of women, why does any of this even matter? Few believe that this decision will be reversed no matter what evidence is provided, and there are still plenty of useful idiots who’ll go out to argue that this is all justifiable, that anybody questioning Saudi Arabia’s atrocious human rights record—the 2023 Freedom in the World Index put them on a score of 8/100, with a score of 1/40 for political rights and 7/60 for civil liberties, a score which tied them with Belarus, Somalia and Afghanistan—is a racist or whatever.
The ongoing existence of such people among Newcastle’s supporters, and there seem to be plenty of them, has been held up as an example that ‘sportswashing works’. The fact that much brighter lights are shined upon their record because of this involvement in football would seem to indicate the contrary. And to be clear, few would argue that anyone should ‘stop supporting’ Newcastle because of the identity of their owners. But this doesn’t mean that the apparently innate tribalism of supporters should take over thinking instead. No-one needs to go out and bat for them; it’s precisely this lack of critical thinking that feels like it’s enabling the laundering of their reputation.
But this story isn’t part of some grand ‘conspiracy’ against Saudi Arabia. This can’t be pinned on the Premier League, that particular flavour of the month when it comes to use of the word ‘shadowy’, the “Big Six Cartel”, or anybody else. This is about what was allowed to happen by the Premier League and the British government, and it's about the moral vacuum at the heart of professional football. No supporter should have to give consideration to such matters in order to follow their football team. That was kind of the point of these objections in the first place.
We already know the extent to which the government pressured the Premier League over this but why did they end up kowtowing to them over it? There is something tragi-comical about representatives of the government that did so questioning the Premier League and the EFL about their governance of the game. Perhaps it's just the case that in the 21st nobody can govern anything with competence any more, whether we're talking about professional football or the United Kingdom.
But if football has appeared almost grubbily desperate to prove that it can it can be trusted to keep its house in order over the last few weeks, the last few days have been particularly disastrous. Down in Berkshire, another football club is dying before our very eyes and no-one who could seems to be doing anything much to prevent it. And up on Tyneside, the brazen spinning will continue and the ultra-conservative theocratic regime will continue to seek to launder its international reputation off the back of our game and to the cheers of many thousands of people. Good luck to whatever regulator steps into this absolute minefield. They're going to need it.