Newcastle's Carabao Cup win: part feelgood story, part PR triumph for dictator state ambition

The Guardian

17-03-2025

Well, that's the nice bit done. Warm feelings, heritage bonds, a cocoon of distracting noise. Wembley is such a different place on these domestic cup days, certainly compared with the Cliff Richard concert vibe of a midweek international.
And that feeling was there right from the start of the Carabao Cup final on Sunday as Newcastle were awarded their first corner, drawing the most extraordinary outburst of noise, static, shared energy from one end to the other, filling all that empty Wembley air.
There is no other human activity where this happens in the same way, an unchoreographed mass human theatre. But this is also power, and power is more than ever open to being used. So the nice bit is done. And maybe it is time now to look at this with a little more clarity.
Two things can be true simultaneously. Newcastle United winning a first major domestic trophy in 70 years is a euphoric feelgood story for the fans. This is true. That same trophy is also a first significant victory for the Saudi Arabian regime harnessing all this untamed human feeling to wash the blood and cruelty from its hands. This is also true.
Does it still feel OK? Is there an aftertaste? Perhaps something very slightly acid? This would be only human. That extraordinary outpouring around Wembley is also, like it or not, a piece of targeted public theatre, the good intertwined with the bad, that thing you love being piggybacked by dictator state ambition, a kind of BurnSaw/BoneSaw dynamic in action.
It is important to recognise none of this is the fault of Newcastle's supporters. The entire process is an act of macro-violence towards sport, clubs, leagues and fans, one in which the football authorities and UK government are complicit.
When Tracey Crouch MP told a parliamentary committee that Newcastle's owners were 'a fund' and nothing more, she was making a misleading statement. A few months later the Saudi wealth fund would assert exactly the opposite in a US court, that the Saudi Private Investment Fund is a government arm, all the better to avoid the discovery process. Naturally Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of the PIF and lieutenant to the crown prince, was present at Wembley to oversee victory on Sunday.
And there are two points worth making now the fizz has subsided. The first is to accept the obvious truth, that football is being used to wash the blood from a hardline regime, treating its supporters like useful idiots in an economic and public relations war; and from there to acknowledge that we don't actually have to acquiesce in this process.
The effects are at least clearer now. One thing Wembley revealed is how thoroughly this has been normalised, to the extent apathy and acceptance can seem like the only options. There is an inescapable puzzle here. To celebrate unconditionally the triumphs of a state-owned propaganda team is to make yourself a conduit for state propaganda, emotions fully hijacked. To refuse to celebrate, to walk away and cede the ground, is to allow that propaganda state to take from you something vital and human, to say: yes, propaganda state, you have effectively won. Sport now belongs to you.
Faced with this the easiest response is simply to retreat into cognitive dissonance, to give in to whatever line you've been fed. Not long ago Dan Burn said Newcastle's players are motivated by a sense of outsiderdom. 'In our pre-match huddles we've said: 'It's us against the world.''
This is such an absurd idea it deserves to be considered properly. The notion that a sporting arm of the world's most persuasive carbon-bribery state, chief producer of economic crack cocaine, can consider itself outsiders, little guys, underdogs is so laughable it feels like it must have its roots in some kind of top‑down messaging. Only billionaire‑level entitlement, seeping through the ecosystem, could suggest this. It is just so much easier, after all, to agree with the people throwing the money around.
Again, it is vital to restate the facts, and to be completely clear at this point who you're embracing in that crowd. The list of human rights issues in Saudi is familiar. A booming execution rate. Dissolution of the rule of law. Accusations of arbitrary detention and torture. Migrant workers treated like human collateral damage. Prison terms for social media posts. Meanwhile, last week in New York there was outrage at the appointment of Saudi Arabia as chair of UN's chief commission on women's rights, described by Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, as 'like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank'.
What about modernism and reform and reaching out? These are certainly words, and sport is clearly key in giving the impression they might actually be real things, too. Football is the chief conduit for this. A trophy, warm feelings about Burn, blanket unquestioning coverage will naturally make this process more impactful and more obviously value for money. It represents an opportunity, too. This is not the moment to slide further into apathy, but a moment to question more thoroughly the means.
The second point about Newcastle's victory is what it says about regulation. Which is that regulation is good. The profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) may need some tinkering. But Newcastle winning a cup is the best argument the rules are working, the same rules some would see as unfair or geared solely towards holding back the oppressed billionaires of the sporting world.
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Regulation is what happens in any serious industry. It's there to stop you becoming a version of Chelsea or insanity-era Paris Saint-Germain. PSR are prompting Newcastle's owners to push through plans for a new ground. Regulation helped Newcastle to build the current settled, well coached, high-functioning team. How much better to win a trophy by astute recruitment and improving players, as Eddie Howe has done.
It is hardly a corset, either. Eight of the starting team at Wembley were bought in the Saudi era. Joelinton has been repurposed out of necessity into a seriously useful force in the central-shithousery role. Even Burn, the good news magnet on Sunday, might have been levered out by now if money were no object. Regulation helps to produce a robust league. Far from undermining international 'competitiveness', it may just save English football from the worst of itself.
Again, football supporters are essentially bystanders in this, victims of the process, forced to make a series of impossible choices. The same cannot be said of those whose role involves reporting it, and who have a responsibility to do something other than jumping on the bus.
Blindly cheerleading journalism is undoubtedly a route to popularity, clicks, affirmation. But it also represents complicity in the process. Perhaps the hoisting of a trophy will give some space for more measured analysis. It was notable on Sunday afternoon that Sky Sports made no mention of the issues around the Saudi ownership of Newcastle, and by implication of the way its broadcast was being piggybacked by a PR project.
This is perhaps both a commercial and an editorial decision. Not just, do our viewers really want to hear this today, but also: do we really want to make an enemy of the sport's great gushing money tap? Who knows, the current broadcast rights holders may feel the need to shift this position before long.
Dazn, the loss-making streaming platform, is now part Saudi-owned, which means essentially limitless in its financial reach, which means Dazn may just be coming for your content before long. Either way the lesson remains the same. Take the warm feelings and the spectacle. But there has never been a greater need to enter this world disabused of all illusions, eyes wide open, and above all prepared to tell the truth.