Newcastle United-Saudi PIF takeover bad business for Premier League

Newcastle United has been sold to a consortium which prominently features the Saudi Public investment Fund (PIF)

This was something that has been in the works for quite some time. The public investment fund should be creating a better existence for everyday people in Saudi Arabia instead of purchasing foreign football teams to swell the wealth of the fund while people continue to wait without domestic innovation.

Newcastle supporters have wanted Mike Ashley to sell the team for long time. While some are jubilant and see it as a good thing, there is more to the deal than what meets the eye.

But now something has happened. More specifically, it has happened and there is nothing to be done, despite the protests of the other Premier League clubs. Those clubs are upset for a bevy of reasons, which includes the massive amount of money that will pour into Newcastle. They will also be upset that a nation with allegations of human rights violations are now in control of a historic side like Newcastle United.

Mike Ashley has his money and is now reportedly eyeing Derby County as his next victim, for the Premier League, it is bad business on a scale that FIFA should hardly be able to stomach.

Newcastle United: The Magpies might fly, but at what cost?

No team wants to lose and no team wants to struggle while the teams around them are building, growing and succeeding. Newcastle is no exception and this pattern of unfortunate play has taken its toll on the fanbase. They want to win and in modern football, petrodollars remain as good a way as any to claw a team to relevance.

Manchester City and PSG are two examples of teams that have ridden the wave of oil money to massive highs and look poised to continue to grow further still.

Sheikh Mansour of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Nasser Al-Khelaifi of Qatar have used the resources of entire nations to fund the ascent of their two clubs, and now, Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud essentially controls Newcastle United, after having just settled the controversy that saw Saudi Arabia accused of helping to pirate televised football games with beIn Sports banned from the country..

This pirating offense ranks low on all the allegations, which includes horrendous human rights violations against his own country  as well as the murder of former Washington Post journalist Jamaal Khashoggi. It is unconscionable that any amount of money could be enough when he is going to be the owner of the team after the purchase is complete.

Yet the English FA, Premier League, anyone who had to sanction the endeavor, apparently signed off on it when Mike Ashley got his proverbial ducks in a row. He was not disgusted enough by the human rights violations of Saudi Arabia to apparently care so long as he made lots of money selling the team.

He should not be allowed to buy Derby County as he has lined his pockets with money from despots and tyrants. He has done so while hurting Newcastle United, although their fans likely do not see it that way, as well as the integrity of the Premier League and football in general as forces for positive in a world such as the one we live in.

Newcastle will improve, there is no doubt. They will hire Antonio Conte or someone massive, spend lots of money to sing big-name players, renovate and redo their facilities and stadium and become a power to reckon with in both England and Europe. Things will feel good to the casual observer but it will all have been bought with little to no mind of the human suffering .

Newcastle United will become great while the very people whose state is funding the team has great swaths of political, religious, cultural and social repression across it. The success of a team and a fan base swells while needless suffering exists across Saudi Arabia as tyrants spend capital on what the great Roman satirist Juvenal would’ve referred to as “bread and circus(es),”

While money conceals and sweeps away human rights crimes, there is nothing other than relief and innovation to sweep away what those people in Saudi Arabia suffer from because of their plight.

In the case of Newcastle, all of this has seemingly been forgotten and the government of the United Kingdom doesn’t seem to care very much either way. Everyone will have to live with this now with plenty of blame to go around.

Mike Ashley deserves a great deal of it but he is nothing more than a greedy businessman whose prerogative is to maximize profit so it’s to be expected. The English FA and Premier League deserve blame too, for they have let everything play out and have accepted MbS as someone who they imagine they can work with despite the atrocities he’s been alleged to have committed.

Even the Newcastle fans deserve some blame. Some pushback may not have changed much but it would’ve shown some character like when “Super League” team fans protested, marched and chanted in the aftermath of that saga. Instead, the well-known human rights violations of Saudi Arabia have been largely ignored from fans to analysts to anyone in between.

This is no regular club sale but the sale of a club to some tawdry folks who happen to have money and power to buy themselves into the good graces of a capitalist society. For football in general, this sale is bad business and besmirches the spirit of fairness and equality of the sport. Some thing are more important than money, and yet, for some, money remains the most important thing, no matter the human or moral cost.