In January 2019, the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium in Jeddah, the bustling, multi-ethnic
port city on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, will host an historic match. Juventus and
AC Milan will play each other, not in some glorified pre-season friendly but in he Italian
Supercoppa.
With all the controversy about the Premier League's 39th game and La Liga's recent failed
attempt to play a league match in the US, the Italian Supercoppa is something of a trailblazer
in this area, having already been played four times in China, twice in the US, twice in
Doha and, most unusually, in Tripoli, the capital of Libya.
The move was announced by the Saudi General Sports Authority on Twitter, with a picture
of Marco Brunelli, the of head of the Italian league, posing with the GSA chief Turki al
Sheikh, smiling from ear to ear wearing oversized sunglasses. More on him later.
But January's final could prove to be even more controversial than the deal struck with
Colo nel Muammar Gaddafi for the 2002 edition. Saudi Arabia is a the midst of a cultural
revolution that could have profound implications for the future of the global game. Under the
auspices of the country's young crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, the conservative Islamic
kingdom appears to be opening itself up to the outside world. The well publicised and
much criticised ban on women driving was lifted. Cinemas were reopened. Saudi's feared religious
police, who would arrest and pursue women who they viewed as dressing immodestly, were
stripped of many of their powers.
But one of the biggest changes of all came in sport. A ban on women attending matches
was lifted but this was but the tip of the iceberg. Saudi Arabia has been investing billions
of pounds in sport and especially football, seeing it as a may to both soften its image
and – with one eye on the successes of its neighbours Qatar and the UAE – to increase
its own soft power and influence. The kingdom is thought to be the driving force behind
a massive proposed $25 billion deal with FIFA that would completely revolutionise the game
and challenge the Champions League for global supremacy. The kingdom has moved to privatise
the clubs that make up its hugely popular local football league and a multimillion dollar
deal was struck with La Liga that saw Saudi's top stars move to a handful of clubs in Spain
in the hope of getting top level experience in the run up to the 2018 World Cup (even
if the five players that did go barely played and instead got hammered by Russia in the
opening game 5-0, as Russian president Vladimir Putin, Mohamed bin Salman and FIFA president
Gianni Infantino bantered with each other in the stands). There could even be a Saudi
backed purchase of Manchester United on the cards.
But there is a problem. Saudi Arabia is and remains one of the world's most uncompromising
abusers of human rights despite its attempt at sportswashing. There is zero democracy.
According to the Cornell Law School's Death Penalty Database, Saudi Arabia has executed
at least 1065 people over the past decade. There is, effectively, a gender apartheid
in the country even after taking into account the lifting of the ban on women attending
games and the ban on driving. Still, in November both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International
revealed they had collected testimonies from leading women's rights activists who had recently
been arrested in the kingdom and, it is alleged, tortured. The liberal blogger Raif Badawi
was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes for his outspoken online activism.
He remains in prison, reportedly in poor health after receiving his first 50 lashes, along
with hundreds of other political prisoners. But he escaped lightly compared to Jamal Khashoggi,
the dissident Saudi Washington Post journalist and critic of Mohammed bin Salman who was
lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, murdered, dismembered and disposed of by a
squad of security personal with links to Mohamed bin Salman. He quickly acquired the nickname
Mohamed Bone Saw and became something of an international pariah. But there was a time
when things were very different. In 2017 Mohamed bin Salman, the Saudi king's
favourite son, was elevated to the position of crown prince. He had a new strategy: Vision
2030, a plan to diversify the country from dependence on its vast oil wealth garnered
from the world's largest oil reserves. The plan to economically and culturally diversify
the country was necessary given that, by one count, 60 per cent of the population was under
30. And part of this strategy was also about presenting a new face of Saudi Arabia to the
world by previously controversial cultural issues that were high visible but also easily
solved. Sport amongst them. With the strong support of Donald Trump's administration in
the US as well as Mohamed bin Zayed, the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates who groomed
MBS, Mohamed Bin Salman was feted in the west as a reformer. Although this didn't last too
long, especially after 200 Saudi elite figures and businessmen were effectively held in the
gilded prison of the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Riyadh on accusations of corruption and only
released, allegedly, after paying billions of dollars back to the state.
Sport, however, can show the world a different face. In 2017 Infantino travelled to Saudi
Arabia to meet with Saudi Arabia's king, as well as MBS and the GSA head Turki al Sheikh,
a key ally of MBS who has spearheaded many of the reforms within football. In fact Infantino
travelled there three times in a year, and famously sat next to MBS at the opening of
the 2018 World Cup.
Just before the finals began, Infantino made a shock proposal to FIFA: a revamped Club
World Cup, expanded to include the biggest European clubs and a direct challenger to
UEFA's Champions League. There was also a proposal for a global version of UEFA's Nations
League, but the deal, it later emerged, also included rights to future World Cups and its
vast and highly lucrative archive of intellectual property: videos, photos, computer games,
the works. The figure was huge. $25 billion was far more than FIFA could have hoped to
ask for. The current Club World Cup, according to the New York Times, is worth $100 million
at best. The problem was, Infantino would not disclose to FIFA who was behind the deal
due to a non disclosure agreement. But he still wanted to push through agreement at
the FIFA Council, or the deal would be withdrawn. In the end, the Council said they needed more
time, but the deal is still there. It later emerged that it was being financed by SoftBank,
a huge Japanese conglomerate which has strong ties to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The
three have combined to create the world's largest tech investment fund.
But the full details of the deal remain opaque. Ever since that knock back Infantino has been
trying to allay FIFA's fears about the deal whilst giving little away about who was behind
it. But then came the killing Khashoggi, which had an immediate effect. A huge investment
conference, dubbed Davos in the Desert, was due to take place not long afterward the murder.
But it was now kryptonite to those with ambitions of doing business in the Kingdom. One of the
figures planing to attend was Avram Glazer, co-chairman of Manchester United. It was alleged
that the visit was a chance to sound out the possibility of a £4 billion sale of the club
to none other than Mohammed bin Salman. But after the Khashoggi killing, which MBS was
heavily implicated in giving the go ahead for but for which he has strongly denied any
involvement with, Glazer pulled out. The killing also put the brakes on the $25 billion FIFA
deal which had been heavily backed by Infantino but strongly opposed by UEFA's president Aleksander
Čeferin. Infantino was forced to stress that direct state funds would not be used to pay
for the deal but few more details were given.
But that isn't the end of Saudi Arabia's interest in the game. The next months will see whether
one strategy will come to fruition, namely the expansion of the Qatar 2022 World Cup
to 48 teams. Saudi Arabia and the UAE has lead a boycott of Qatar on the tenuous grounds
that it supports terrorism. The blockade, as it is known in Qatar, has largely failed
but Saudi Arabia and the UAE have made taking the World Cup away from Qatar a key foreign
policy goal. And if they can't get that, then to a least force Qatar to share it with them.
Such an expansion to 48 teams, at this late stage, would be almost impossible for Qatar
to accommodate, meaning that it would, indeed, have to shared with other countries.
And the most enthusiastic backer of the expansion? Gianni Infantino himself. In November he addressed
the leaders of the G20, the 20 largest economies in the world, in Argentina. Mohamed bin Salman
amongst them. After saying for years that sports and politics should be separate, Infantino
gave a speech that claimed football could in fact be used to heal social and political
divisions. One example? The rift between the Gulf states. “Maybe, if football makes dreams
come true, in 2022 we could also experience a World Cup in Qatar as well as, why not,
some games in other countries of the Arabian Gulf. But this is another story, hopefully
with a happy end. Inshallah!” he said.
Later he told The Guardian that expanding and sharing the World Cup could help bring
peace in the Gulf. When asked about Saudi Arabia hosting matches he said: “if any
discussion around the World Cup can help in any way whatsoever to make the situation evolve
in that region, with regard to Saudi Arabia, it’s a nice impact maybe.”
But the ghost of Jamal Khashoggi looms large with every Saudi investment now, whether it
is Manchester United's strategic partnership with the GSA signed in 2017 with Turki al
Sheikh holding up a Manchester United shirt with his name on the back, or their alleged
proposed takeover of
the club.
Manchester City has been strongly criticised for the role it plays in sportswashing the
human rights abuses of the United Arab Emirates. When the Italian Supercoppa kicks off in Jeddah,
it might also be time for football to have the same conversation about Saudi Arabia.