Saudi Arabia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Golf

      Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf Deal Is a Triumph That Transcends Sports

      by

      The deal to merge LIV Golf with the PGA Tour is a big win for the oil-rich kingdom, headlining a banner week that also includes a visit from the American secretary of state.There was no shortage of unpleasant things that the commissioner of the top U.S. golf circuit, the PGA Tour, said about Saudi Arabia when an upstart league backed by the oil-rich kingdom began recruiting his high-profile players.The commissioner, Jay Monahan, lamented a “foreign monarchy that is spending billions of dollars in an attempt to buy the game of golf.” He sniped at players who left for the new league, called LIV Golf, hinting at the stain that the Saudi government’s human rights violations would leave on them.But on Tuesday, he sat down next to the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — both smiling jovially — for a television interview to announce that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf were forming what promises to be a lucrative partnership.“I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” Mr. Monahan said later the same day. “But circumstances do change.”The deal, if it goes forward, represents an enormous victory for Saudi Arabia and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the country’s bid to become a major player in global sports, giving the kingdom considerable sway over the game of golf. But the significance of the moment transcends sports as Saudi Arabia under Prince Mohammed seeks greater political influence in the Middle East and beyond.Over the past weeks, the country has seen a flurry of diplomatic activity, and some successes, including the opening of an embassy of its longtime regional rival, Iran, as the two countries move toward restoring normal relations.Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour, center, without a cap. “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite,” he said, referring to the deal with LIV. “But circumstances do change.”Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesAnd the golf deal is only the capstone of a busy week in which Prince Mohammed is also hosting the visiting U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who represents another once-vocal critic of the kingdom, President Biden. On the campaign trail in 2020, Mr. Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and other human rights violations.“I’m not going to lie. This is a moment that a lot of us are relishing,” Prince Talal Al Faisal, a Saudi businessman and royal family member, said in an interview. Like many Saudis, the prince said that he felt the stream of negative news coverage about his country was often unfair or inaccurate.“It gets to a point where you think to yourself, OK, this is hopeless,” he said. “And a moment like this makes you think, ‘Hang on, well, if you try hard enough, you eventually get your way.’”Five years ago, this moment would have seemed virtually impossible.In 2018, Saudi agents murdered and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi exile who had fled to the United States, in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. The international condemnation was sharp, and for a brief time, it seemed like Prince Mohammed was facing isolation on the world stage.An American intelligence assessment determined that the crown prince had likely ordered the killing, a charge he has repeatedly denied.The murder was the peak of a broader crackdown on dissent in Saudi Arabia that continues today. But the icy mood did not last long.Within months, American and European chief executives who had canceled their appearances at conferences in the kingdom quietly returned. Prince Mohammed told visitors that he was determined to forge ahead with his plan to diversify the conservative Islamic kingdom’s economy and open it up socially.Foreign leaders began returning for visits. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which oversees about $650 billion in assets, continued to roll out high-profile investments around the world, such as LIV Golf.As Prince Talal notes, “We are, like it or not, central to a lot of the things that happen across the globe.”Saudi Arabia’s attempts to enter the world of golf had included an earlier approach to the PGA Tour about starting a partnership. But that approach was rebuffed, and it was only after the introduction of the rival LIV Golf last year — which provoked a bruising legal battle and eventually a series of secret meetings between PGA Tour leaders and Saudi officials — that Mr. Monahan and his lieutenants came around.Saudis have grown accustomed to seeing their former critics reversing course.In 2018, after Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Prince Mohammed “toxic” and a “wrecking ball,” vowing that he would never visit Saudi Arabia “as long as this guy is in charge.” Yet in April, Mr. Graham traveled to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and was photographed grinning with Prince Mohammed.“Things in Saudi Arabia are changing very quickly for the better,” he told ABC after his visit. “His vision for the country economically is transformative.”Indeed, in the span of five years, Prince Mohammed has made serious strides toward diversifying the oil-dependent economy, investing in mining, tourism and entertainment. Under him, the country ended a ban on women driving, significantly loosened gender segregation and even promoted electronic music raves in the desert, ripping apart ideas about what was possible in the kingdom.“Keeping up with Saudi Arabia is not only tough for non-Saudis but for Saudis themselves,” said Bader Al-Saif, assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “This shock-and-awe approach hopes to deliver faster results than those delivered in previous waves in Saudi history,” he added.Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday.Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Royal Court, via ReutersDuring Mr. Blinken’s visit to the kingdom this week, he will attend a gathering of a global coalition to counter the terrorist group Islamic State. For Prince Mohammed, this summit represents another chance to demonstrate his leadership.He has been keen to hedge against Saudi Arabia’s past dependence on the United States, its main security guarantor.“The relationship now looks more like the way the U.S. relates to some European partners,” said Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “Security cooperation is key and maintained by both sides, but the Saudis are flexing their muscles in an effort to become a regional and international actor of significance in a world in which power is diffused, and the U.S. picks its battles much more cautiously.”Just days before Mr. Blinken’s arrival on Tuesday, Prince Mohammed welcomed the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, for a visit. Next week, the Saudi Ministry of Investment will host a major gathering of Arab and Chinese businesspeople.And, at least for a few days, the kingdom can continue to bask in the glow of its golf victory.The head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, will also head the board of the new golf entity, though the PGA Tour will hold a majority of the board seats. The wealth fund has the exclusive right to invest in the new company going forward, opening the door for it to increase its stake in the years ahead.The deal protects Mr. al-Rumayyan, a golf aficionado, from the prospect of being deposed and scrutinized in American courtrooms, a risk that had loomed over him during the legal battles that the PGA Tour and LIV golf fought before their deal.Yasir al-Rumayyan, head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, is also chairman of the English soccer club Newcastle United.Scott Heppell/ReutersThe sovereign wealth fund has also managed to achieve quick results for its investment in the English soccer club Newcastle United, which qualified for the UEFA Champions League just 18 months after it was purchased.Critics have accused Saudi Arabia of using its spending power in sports to distract from its poor human rights record, allegations that Saudi officials have rejected.During his meeting with Prince Mohammed on Tuesday, Mr. Blinken “emphasized that our bilateral relationship is strengthened by progress on human rights,” Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said.But for Saudis whose family members remain in prison, targeted in the crackdown, such words offer little comfort.Abdullah al-Qahtani, a dual Saudi American citizen, has not heard from his father, Mohammed al-Qahtani, since October, when he disappeared shortly before he was scheduled to be released from a Saudi prison. He had been serving a 10-year prison sentence in relation to starting a human rights organization.A handout picture provided by the family of Mohammed al-Qahtani, who disappeared shortly before he was to be released from a Saudi prison where he was serving a 10-year sentence in relation to starting a human rights organization.Family of Mohammed al-Qahtani, via Agence France-Presse“It’s getting to the point where all the doors are shutting in our faces,’ the younger Mr. al-Qahtani said on Tuesday, during a virtual news conference. “What I want is to bring his issue to light, because they have to know. I know Secretary Blinken is going to be in Saudi. He has to bring up my dad’s situation.”Alan Blinder More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Golf

      PGA Tour and LIV Golf Agree to Deal to End Fight Over Sport

      by

      The PGA Tour, the dominant force in men’s professional golf for generations, and LIV Golf, which made its debut just last year and is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi money, will together form an industry powerhouse that is expected to transform the sport, executives announced Tuesday.The rival circuits had spent the last year clashing in public, and the tentative agreement that emerged from secret negotiations blindsided virtually all of the world’s top players, agents and broadcasters. The deal would create a new company that would consolidate the PGA Tour’s prestige, television contracts and marketing muscle with Saudi money.The new company came together so quickly that it does not yet even have a name and is referred to in the agreement documents simply as “NewCo.” It would be controlled by the PGA Tour but significantly financed by the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, will be the new company’s chairman.The deal, coming when Saudi Arabia is increasingly looking to assert itself on the world stage as something besides one of the world’s largest oil producers, has implications beyond sports. The Saudi money will give the new organization greater clout, but it comes with the troubling association of the kingdom’s human rights record, its treatment of women and accusations that it was responsible for the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a leading critic.The agreement does not immediately amount to a Saudi takeover of professional golf, but it positions the nation’s top officials to have enormous sway over the game. It also represents an escalation in Saudi ambitions in sports, moving beyond its corporate sponsorship of Formula 1 racing and ownership of an English soccer team into a place where it can exert influence over the highest reaches of a global game.“Everybody is in shock,” said Paul Azinger, the winner of the 1993 P.G.A. Championship and the lead golf analyst for NBC Sports. “The future of golf is forever different.”Since LIV began play last year, it has used some of the richest contracts and prize money in the sport’s history to entice players away from the PGA Tour. Until Tuesday morning, the PGA Tour had been publicly uncompromising: LIV was a threat to the game and a glamorous way for Saudi Arabia to rehabilitate its reputation. The PGA Tour’s commissioner, Jay Monahan, had even avoided uttering LIV’s name in public.But a series of springtime meetings in London, Venice and San Francisco led to a framework agreement that stunned the golf industry for its timing and scope. Monahan, who defended the decision as a sound business choice and said he had accepted that he would be accused of hypocrisy, met with PGA Tour players in Toronto on Tuesday in what he called an “intense” and “certainly heated” exchange.The deal, though, proved right the predictions that there could eventually be an uneasy patching-up of the sport’s fractures. The PGA Tour’s board, which includes a handful of players like Patrick Cantlay and Rory McIlroy, must still approve the agreement, a process that could be tumultuous.It was only a year ago this week that LIV Golf held its inaugural tournament, prompting the PGA Tour to suspend players who competed in it. But by the end of the year, even though the circuit was locked in an antitrust battle with the PGA Tour and its stars were confronting uncertain futures at the sport’s marquee competitions, LIV had some of the biggest names in golf on its payroll. Its players have included the major tournament champions Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Cameron Smith.LIV Golf’s chief executive, Greg Norman, left, applauded Yasir al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, at LIV’s tournament near Chicago in September.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressThe players were familiar, but LIV’s 54-hole events — the name derives from the Roman numerals for that number — were jarring, with blaring music and golfers in shorts not facing the specter of being unceremoniously cut midway through. The PGA Tour, meanwhile, defended its 72-hole events, where low performers do not compete into the weekend, as rigorous athletic tests that adhered to the traditions of an ancient game.The less-starchy LIV concept drew plenty of headlines, and the league won even greater attention because of its links to former President Donald J. Trump, who hosted LIV tournaments and emerged as one of its most enthusiastic boosters. The league, however, was still largely dependent on the largess of a wealth fund that had been warned that a rebel golf circuit was no certain financial bonanza. It stumbled to a television deal with the CW Network, and big corporate sponsorships were scarce.The league accrued some athletic successes, even as its players faced the risk of eventual exclusion from golf’s major tournaments, which are run by organizations that are close to, but distinct from, the PGA Tour.Last month, Koepka won the P.G.A. Championship, which was organized by the P.G.A. of America. Koepka, Mickelson and Patrick Reed were among the LIV players who fared especially well at the Masters Tournament, administered by Augusta National Golf Club, in early April.Within weeks of the Masters, though, after a run of mutual overtures and months of bravado, PGA Tour and Saudi executives were convening in secret to see if there was a way toward some kind of coexistence, in part, Monahan suggested, because he did not think it was “right or sustainable to have this tension in our sport.” The result was an agreement that gives the tour the upper hand but is poised to make permanent Saudi Arabia’s influence over golf’s starry ranks.Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, is in line to be the chief executive of the new company, which will include an executive committee stocked with tour loyalists. But al-Rumayyan’s presence, as well as the promise that the wealth fund can play a pivotal role in how the company is ultimately funded, means that Saudi Arabia could do much to shape the sport’s future.In a memorandum to players on Tuesday, Monahan insisted that his tour’s “history, legacy and pro-competitive model not only remains intact, but is supercharged for the future.”That was hardly a consensus view. Mackenzie Hughes, a PGA Tour player, acidly noted on Twitter that there was “nothing like finding out through Twitter that we’re merging with a tour that we said we’d never do that with.” And Terry Strada, the chairwoman of 9/11 Families United, who had assailed the Saudi foray into golf because of misgivings about the kingdom after the 2001 terrorist attacks, said Monahan and the tour had “become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation.”Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, will be the chief executive of the new company.Rob Carr/Getty ImagesThe tour and the wealth fund both had incentives to forge an agreement, besides the prospect of concluding a chaotic chapter marked by allegations of betrayal and greed.LIV had faced setbacks in civil litigation against the PGA Tour that threatened to drag al-Rumayyan into sworn testimony and force the wealth fund to turn over documents that could have become public. The tour has been under scrutiny from Justice Department antitrust investigators, who had examined in recent months whether the tour’s tactics to counter LIV had undermined golf’s labor market.The litigation between the tour and LIV will end under the terms of the agreement announced Tuesday. The fate of the antitrust inquiry was less clear — experts said the new arrangement would not automatically immunize the tour from potential legal trouble — but LIV’s standing as its leading cheerleader evaporated.For this year, the world’s professional golfers are unlikely to see seismic changes in their schedules or playing formats, with LIV and the PGA Tour expected to hold competitions as planned. There may be far more consequential changes later, though, chiefly because the new PGA Tour-controlled company will determine whether and how LIV’s team-oriented format might be blended with the tour’s more familiar offerings.LIV players are expected to have pathways to apply for reinstatement to the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour, circuits from which some had resigned when faced with fines and suspensions, but they could face residual penalties for leaving in the first place. Through a spokeswoman, Greg Norman, the two-time major tournament champion who has been LIV’s commissioner, declined to be interviewed on Tuesday.No matter what comes of the LIV brand or style, Tuesday’s announcement is a singular milestone in the Saudi quest to become a titan in global sports. With the deal, the kingdom can move, at least in golf, from a well-heeled disrupter to a seat of power at the establishment’s table.Saudi officials have repeatedly denied that political or public relations motives undergird their eager pursuit of sports investments. Instead, they have framed the investments as necessary for shoring up the resource-rich kingdom’s finances and to enhance its standing on the world stage.Professional golfers on both the PGA and LIV tours are unlikely to see changes in their schedules this year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBeyond its imprint on golf, the wealth fund previously purchased Newcastle United, a potent English soccer team, and a company with close ties to the fund has eyed investments in cricket, tennis and e-sports. And Saudi Arabia has tried to become a host of major sporting events, from boxing matches to its pending bid to host the World Cup in 2030.But when Saudi Arabia barged into golf last year, it was nearly unthinkable that al-Rumayyan would so swiftly become a formal ally of Monahan and the sport’s other power brokers.“Anybody who thought about it logically would see that something was going to have to happen,” Adam Hadwin, a PGA Tour player, said on Tuesday. It was inconceivable, he suggested, that the world’s best players would only compete against each other at the four major tournaments, but an armistice “happening this quick and in this way is surprising.”For much of the last year, LIV players have deflected questions about Saudi Arabia’s history on human rights and other matters that helped make the kingdom’s surge into golf an international flashpoint. They were, they often said, merely golfers and entertainers.Until Tuesday, Monahan had tried to use the stain of Saudi Arabia to undercut the new league and its golfers.“I would ask any player that has left, or any player that would ever consider leaving: Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?” he said last year.On Tuesday, when Monahan declared that the leaders of golf’s factions had “realized that we were better off together than we were fighting or apart,” it was his tour’s players facing questions about lucrative connections to Riyadh.“I’ve dedicated my entire life to being at golf’s highest level,” Hadwin, the tour player, said. “I’m not about to stop playing golf because the entity that I play for has joined forces with the Saudi government.”Reporting was contributed by More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Golf

      Through Ties to Saudis, Golf Deal Promises Benefits to Trump

      by

      The new alliance between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf is the latest example of how the former president’s relationship with Saudi Arabia has yielded gains, and criticism, for both.The surprising deal on Tuesday ending a civil war in the world of professional golf stands to produce benefits for former President Donald J. Trump’s family business by increasing the prospect of major tournaments continuing to be played at Trump-owned courses in the United States and perhaps abroad.The outcome is the latest example of how the close relationship between Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund is the force behind the upheaval in the golf world, has proved beneficial to both sides even as it has prompted intense ethical scrutiny and political criticism.Even as it has injected new money and competition into professional golf, Saudi Arabia has been accused of using its wealth to buff its global reputation and obscure its human rights record through sports. That campaign now seems to have yielded business opportunities and a higher profile in the golf world for Mr. Trump as he seeks another term in the White House.Since the establishment of LIV Golf, the Saudi-funded breakaway professional golf circuit, Mr. Trump and his family have aligned themselves with LIV against the PGA Tour at a time when the golf establishment in the United States and Britain had moved to shut Trump courses out of major professional competitions, a trophy that the Trump family had long sought.The turn away from Mr. Trump and his courses only accelerated after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Just days after the assault, P.G.A. of America announced it was canceling a planned 2022 tournament at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., which had been planned for years.LIV soon became the Trump family’s ticket back into the rarefied world of global tournaments, with events last year at Bedminster and Trump National Doral, the family’s golf resort near Miami. This year LIV brought tournaments to three Trump courses, adding the Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia to the schedule.The decision by professional golf in the United States to shun Mr. Trump had infuriated members of his family. Mr. Trump’s business had spent more than a decade buying up or developing golf courses around the world with the goal of hosting major tournaments, which help drive memberships by putting the courses in the spotlight and could confer a degree of sports-world legitimacy on Mr. Trump, an avid golfer.LIV Golf held a tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., in 2022.Doug Mills/The New York TimesDating back to when Mr. Trump was in the White House, he and his family have had unusually close ties with Saudi Arabia and the royal family there. His first foreign trip as president was to Riyadh, where he received a lavish welcome.Mr. Trump later downplayed the Saudi government’s role in the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist, and he defended while in office Saudi Arabia’s long-running military campaign in neighboring Yemen.After Mr. Trump left office, that relationship continued in the form of a $2 billion commitment by the Public Investment Fund — led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler — to an investment fund set up by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law. The Saudi fund also put $1 billion into a firm run by Steven Mnuchin, who had been Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary.LIV Golf is backed by the same Saudi fund. The head of the fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, an avid golfer who also took on the role overseeing LIV Golf, spent lavishly to recruit top professional players like Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka and big names like Phil Mickelson with $25 million purses and guaranteed contracts that sometimes amounted to $100 million or more.But the new alliance between the PGA Tour and LIV will also only escalate questions about Mr. Trump and potential conflicts of interest, as he does business with foreign government entities while also running again for the White House.Already, the Justice Department, as part of its investigation into the handling of classified documents by Mr. Trump, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization, seeking records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with LIV Golf.The World of LIV GolfA guide to the entangled and far-reaching power structure of the Saudi-financed golf tour.Under the agreement announced Tuesday, Mr. al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will join the board of the PGA Tour. Mr. al-Rumayyan also said on Tuesday that the Saudi investment fund is prepared to invest billions of dollars into the merged golf tournament effort.On Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform and personal megaphone, he wrote: “Great news from LIV Golf. A big, beautiful, and glamorous deal for the wonderful world of golf.”Mr. Trump’s son Eric Trump, in an interview on Tuesday, also welcomed the agreement, calling it “a wonderful thing for the game of golf,” adding that he expects tournaments to continue at Trump-owned courses once the merger is complete.When asked if the Trump family had played a role in urging the PGA Tour and the wealth fund to join forces, Eric Trump declined to comment. But he did say that the family has developed close friends over many years in the golf world, including those associated with the PGA Tour and LIV.The Trump family has sought to have more of its golf courses host LIV tournaments, including a club in Dubai and the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, venues it now hopes to see added in future years to a reunified golf industry.This reflects the intense effort by the Trump family to bring events to its courses, including in Scotland, which the British Open, one of professional golf’s major tournaments, has repeatedly declined to do. While president, Mr. Trump enlisted the American ambassador to Britain to pressure the British government, unsuccessfully, to hold a tournament at Turnberry.The payments from the LIV tournaments do not show up in Mr. Trump’s financial disclosure report, which he filed in May, suggesting that the fees are going directly to the individual golf clubs and are counted as part of their overall revenues. The Trump family has not said how much they are making from LIV.Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will join the board of the PGA Tour.Doug Mills/The New York Times“Look, it’s peanuts for me. This is peanuts,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with reporters last month at his golf club in Virginia during a LIV event, adding that “they pay a rental fee. They want to use my properties because they’re the best properties.”In July, just before the first LIV tournament was played at Trump National Bedminster, Mr. Trump predicted that the rival golf tours would ultimately merge, and he suggested that players who stayed loyal to the PGA Tour were making a financial mistake.“All of those golfers that remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA, in all of its different forms, will pay a big price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big ‘thank you’ from PGA officials who are making Millions of Dollars a year,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social in July 2022. “If you don’t take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place, and only say how smart the original signees were.”In an interview last year at Trump National Doral, when the LIV tournament was taking place there, Mr. Trump added that he was confident the Saudis were going to win the dispute.“You’re not going to beat these people,” Mr. Trump said in October. “These people have great spirit, they’re phenomenal people and they have unlimited money — unlimited.”There won’t be any immediate effect for Mr. Trump, as the PGA and LIV tours at least for now will each continue independently, with the LIV season going forward as planned this year and the PGA sticking to competition sites it had already identified, a spokeswoman for PGA Tour said Tuesday.But his alliance with the Saudis holds some political risks for Mr. Trump as he campaigns to return to the White House.The announcement of the LIV-PGA deal immediately generated protests from a group called 9/11 Families United, which has pushed for continued investigation into the origins of the 2001 terror attacks. The group called the efforts by Saudi Arabia to enter professional golf “sportswashing” as part of a plan to improve the country’s reputation related to human rights and allegations that there were links between the hijackers and the Saudi government.The leaders of the PGA Tour, a spokesman for 9/11 Families United said in a statement, “appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation,” a claim that also brought demonstrators to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster last year when the LIV tournament was being played there.Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, noted on Tuesday that the PGA had long rejected any talk of merging with LIV.“PGA officials were in my office just months ago talking about how the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from having a stake in a major American sport,” he wrote on Twitter. “I guess maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?”Alan Blinder More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      Saudi Soccer League Creates Huge Fund to Sign Global Stars

      by

      A coordinated effort financed by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund is offering huge paydays to some of the sport’s biggest stars if they join Saudi Arabia’s best teams.The lists have been drawn up and the financing secured. Saudi Arabia is looking to lure some of the world’s best known soccer players to join Cristiano Ronaldo in its national league. And to close the deals, it is relying on money, the one commodity it knows it can offer more of than any of its rival leagues.Similar in ambition to the Saudi-financed campaign to dominate golf through the new LIV series, the plan appears to be a centralized effort — supported at the highest levels in Saudi Arabia, and financed by the kingdom’s huge sovereign wealth fund — to turn the country’s domestic league, a footnote on the global soccer stage, into a destination for top talent.To make that happen, Saudi clubs are already approaching players receptive to moving to the kingdom with some of the highest annual salaries in sports history. The deals could require in excess of $1 billion for wages for some 20 foreign players.Cristiano Ronaldo, a five-time world player of the year, has led the way. He joined the Saudi club Al-Nassr after the 2022 World Cup, in a deal reported to be worth $200 million per season. Last month, Al-Nassr narrowly missed out on the league championship on the penultimate week of the season, but for those running the Saudi league Ronaldo’s presence alone was a victory in that it ensured unprecedented attention on the country’s top division, the Saudi Premier League.Cristiano Ronaldo signed with the Saudi club Al-Nassr after the World Cup in Qatar.Ahmed Yosri/ReutersSince Ronaldo arrived, the Saudi league has been considering whether to centrally coordinate more big-money signings in order to distribute talent evenly among the biggest teams, according to interviews with agents, television executives, Saudi sports officials and consultants hired to execute the project, the details of which have not previously been reported. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the deals involved were private.In recent weeks, leaks about huge offers to famous players have mounted: Lionel Messi, who led Argentina to the World Cup title in December, is said to have been tempted by a contract even richer than Ronaldo’s Saudi deal; and the French striker Karim Benzema, the reigning world player of the year, has reportedly agreed to leave Real Madrid for a nine-figure deal to play in Saudi Arabia.The Saudi league’s British chief executive, Garry Cook, a former Nike executive who briefly ran Manchester City after it was bought by the brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, has been tasked with executing the plans. Cook did not respond to an email seeking comment. League officials also did not respond to requests for comment about the plans.The project comes on the heels of a surprisingly strong performance by Saudi Arabia at last year’s men’s World Cup in Qatar. The team’s run included a stunning victory over the eventual champion, Argentina, which stoked pride on the Saudi streets and in the halls of power in Riyadh. The project’s goal is not so much to make the Saudi league an equal of century-old competitions like England’s Premier League or other top European competitions, but to increase Saudi influence in the sport, and perhaps boost its profile as it bids for the 2030 World Cup.But the effort also is reminiscent of a similar scheme a decade ago in which China sought to force its way into the global soccer conversation through a series of high-profile and high-dollar acquisitions. That bold plan, eventually marred by broken contracts, economic implosions and the coronavirus pandemic, is now seemingly at an end.The plans for the Saudi league to become the dominant domestic competition in Asia are similarly subject to the whims of the country’s leadership, and could yet be derailed by a sudden change of direction, or an ability to sign the kind of elite talents being pursued. The players, too, would be committing to contracts with teams that in the past have been regular attendees at arbitration hearings claiming unpaid fees and salaries.According to the interviews with people familiar with the project, the league, and not the clubs, would centrally negotiate player transfers and assign players to certain teams, in a model similar to one used by Major League Soccer as it built its global profile. Centralized signings would be a departure from what is typical in much of the rest of the world, where clubs directly acquire and trade players independently.The size of the Saudi war chest is unclear, but officials briefed on the subject say it is as hefty as the list of players the league has identified as potential recruits. Much of the money invested in the league and the clubs in recent times has come from the Public Investment Fund, the country’s sovereign wealth fund chaired by the kingdom’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.The fund has signed 20-year commercial agreements worth tens of millions of dollars with the four most popular clubs in the Saudi Premier League. Those deals will require the teams, two from Riyadh and two from the port city of Jeddah, to play games at new arenas in entertainment complexes being built by PIF subsidiaries. The PIF also sponsors the league itself through one of the companies in its portfolio, the real estate developer Roshn.A fan shopping for an Al-Hilal jersey in May, after published reports that the Argentina star Lionel Messi was considering signing with the decorated Saudi club.Ahmed Yosri/ReutersAccording to one of the people briefed on the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly, the goal is for the four biggest teams to field three top foreign players each, and for another eight players to be distributed among the remaining 12 teams in the league.The move for greater centralization of the league would end a period of autonomy granted to the clubs, and is further indication of the Saudi state’s interest in using sports as part of a drive to alter perceptions of the kingdom on the global stage, and diversify its economy away from oil. Saudi Arabia has been among the biggest spenders in global sports in recent years, bringing major events to the kingdom and investing in sports properties.PIF has been the driving force behind much of that, too. Two years ago it acquired Newcastle United, an English Premier League club, and through its funding and smart recruitment helped it to achieve its best league finish in decades and a place in next season’s Champions League. The Saudi oil company, Aramco, is a major sponsor of the Formula 1 auto racing series. But perhaps the PIF’s splashiest efforts have been in golf, where it has poured billions into creating LIV, the rival competition to the established tours in North America and EuropeAll of those projects have attracted scrutiny amid claims Saudi Arabia is using its investments in sports to divert attention from its human rights record. But the golf series, in particular, has shown that Saudi Arabia’s interest in sports may not be deterred even if the promised financial bonanza does not arrive. And Saudi officials have vigorously denied “sportswashing” allegations, arguing that some of the motivations behind their push into global sports include catering to their sports-loving population and encouraging greater physical activity in a country where obesity and diabetes are common.Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, watching the King’s Cup final between Al-Hilal and Al-Wehda in May.Saudi Press Agency/via ReutersDiscussions with potential soccer recruits and their agents are underway. Saudi Arabia’s sudden and cash-soaked presence is likely to create further chaos in soccer’s typically frenzied summer trading window, which typically runs from June through August.Beefing up the four best teams may not be universally popular in the kingdom which has its own rich soccer history and where the sport is passionately followed. Teams not considered to be counted in the elite group are already expressing frustration at the prospect of being left behind.The sense of unfairness has been felt most visibly at Al-Shabab, the third-largest club in the capital, Riyadh, which has had to contend with living in the shadows of its prominent rivals Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal and their two Jeddah-based counterparts, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli.“I have buried the ‘big four’ myth with my own hands,” the Al-Shabab president Khalid al-Baltan told reporters at the end of last season, when Al-Ahli was relegated to the second division for the first time in its history. Al-Baltan’s team dominated the Saudi league in the 1990s, when it was home to stars such as Fuad Anwar Amin and Saeed al-Owairan, who led Saudi Arabia to the knockout stage in the kingdom’s first World Cup appearance in 1994.While Saudi Arabia’s ministry of sports is currently funding a major renovation of Al-Shabab stadium in northern Riyadh, al-Baltan has complained bitterly about a lack of support — while taking care to avoid criticizing the government or the PIF by name.“The gap is getting too large, the financial situation does not allow us to compete with other clubs,” al-Baltan said during a news conference last week, as he wondered aloud how Al-Shabab was supposed to compete when Ronaldo’s salary for one season is four times the size of his club’s annual budget.“Am I expected to close that huge gap myself?” he asked. “My car is a small Japanese sedan, and I’m somehow expected to race against Lamborghinis and Ferraris. If I don’t win then I’m bad? This is not logical.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Golf

      LIV Golf Wants to Talk About Sports. Donald Trump Still Looms.

      by

      It was only on Sunday evening that LIV Golf, the men’s league awash in billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, met its greatest athletic triumph to date when one of its headliners, Brooks Koepka, emphatically won the P.G.A. Championship.By Thursday morning, though, LIV’s road show had been reinfused with the political bent that has trailed the second-year circuit as it has convulsed professional golf: the loquacious, limelight-seizing presence of former President Donald J. Trump, who is hosting one of the league’s tournaments this weekend at a course northwest of Washington.Whether LIV can outrun Trump’s shadow, and whether it even wants to, could do much to shape how the league is perceived in the years ahead, particularly in the United States, where it has struggled to gain a meaningful foothold against the PGA Tour.But for now, besides major tournament winners like Koepka and Phil Mickelson who have joined the circuit, there is probably no figure beyond golf more publicly linked to LIV than Trump, who has repeatedly and enthusiastically cheered Saudi Arabia’s thunderous, flashy entrance into sports. At its events, he often seems like an eager M.C. whose role is at once decidedly conspicuous and deeply mysterious — neither the Trump Organization nor LIV have disclosed how much money the former president’s company is making for the events — as the league looks to make inroads in a hidebound sport.The former President Donald J. Trump played with Patrick Reed during a pro-am event Thursday.Trump talked to the news media throughout his round of golf.“They want to use my properties because they’re the best properties,” Trump said on Thursday, when he spent five hours appearing in a pro-am event with the LIV players Graeme McDowell and Patrick Reed (and staging what amounted to a rolling news conference about politics and an infomercial about his property over 18 holes along the Potomac River).The Trump portfolio does indeed feature some exceptional courses, including the Washington-area location, which once held a Senior P.G.A. Championship, and LIV executives have said in the past that they were drawn to them because many top-caliber properties in the United States were not willing to host a circuit intended to rival the PGA Tour. But Trump’s persistent, growing place in LIV’s orbit also invites sustained skepticism of the motives and intentions of the league, which some critics see as a glossy way for Saudi Arabia to rehabilitate its image.The former president is unbothered by the league’s patron, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and the kingdom’s budding place in professional golf, despite its record of human rights abuses. He is still casting aside objections from family members of Sept. 11 victims, some of whom believe Saudi Arabia played a role in the 2001 attacks, because, as he said Thursday, LIV tournaments are “great economic development.” He is openly admiring the millions and millions of dollars that the Saudis are raining down onto players and, of course, properties like his, even though he asserted Thursday that hosting tournaments amounts to “peanuts for me.” This year, LIV will travel to three of his properties, up from two in its inaugural season.He has remained steadfast in his loyalty even though a special counsel from the Justice Department, Jack Smith, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records related to LIV.In an interview as he walked between holes on Thursday, Trump described Smith’s aggressive approach as “retribution” because the Biden administration wants “to do something to take the spotlight off what’s taken place.” He said he did not know why his ties to LIV had drawn the special counsel’s scrutiny.Trump’s affection for LIV can be traced, at least in part, to years of friction with golf’s establishment.Graeme McDowell, right, who played with Trump Thursday is among the past major champions to have left the PGA Tour for LIV.Neither the Trump Organization nor LIV have disclosed how much money the former president’s company is making for the events on his courses.In 2016, the PGA Tour ended a longstanding relationship with Trump’s course in Doral, Fla., near Miami, because of what its then-commissioner described as “fundamentally a sponsorship issue.” And in 2021, after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the P.G.A. of America — which is separate from the PGA Tour — abandoned its plan to host its flagship men’s championship at a Trump property in New Jersey in 2022.Trump has not fared much better abroad. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, has signaled it does not intend to take the tournament back to Trump-controlled Turnberry, where LIV’s commissioner, Greg Norman, won one of his two Opens.LIV has embraced Trump, though, and in return gotten a former president’s imprimatur, along with bursts of news coverage for events that might have gone unnoticed otherwise. He brings prestige and power, diluted as both might be by the divisiveness in which he revels.“They have unlimited money and they love it,” he said Thursday, “and it’s been great publicity for Saudi Arabia.”But for every day Trump appears at a LIV event, it is a day that LIV might as well write off as one in which it will not escape the pointed questions that it has spent a year trying to move past, or at least saying it wants to move past.It has been hard enough for the league, even on a day when Trump is not playing a round, not to have its players confronting questions about the morality of accepting millions in Saudi money.“We’re contracted to play golf,” Bryson DeChambeau, the 2020 U.S. Open winner who finished in a tie for fourth at the P.G.A. Championship last weekend, said on Wednesday. “I think the most important part is to provide great entertainment wherever possible on whatever platform that is, whatever platform that provides it. When you can talk about ethics, that’s people’s perception. I completely disagree with it, but everybody has the right to their own opinion, and I’d say, was it worth it? Absolutely.”Trump suggested Thursday that nothing — not even a return to the White House — would easily dissuade him from doing business with the league.But DeChambeau hardly has the same megaphone or presence as a former occupant of the Oval Office. When Trump appears at a LIV event, even winners of the Masters Tournament or the U.S. Open are relegated to supporting actors.LIV executives have generally brushed aside questions about whether the former president is good for business, or merely essential for it, given their troubles landing quality venues. They seem convinced that, at some point, sports will overtake politics, which might be wishful thinking since Trump suggested Thursday that nothing — not even a return to the White House — would easily dissuade him from doing business with the league.But LIV’s strategy still involves a gamble that the presence of one of the nation’s most polarizing figures will not scare off even more of the sponsorship contracts and television rights that are already proving hard to come by for the operation. And Trump can just as easily alienate prospective fans as he can entice them.Trump himself insists that LIV craves him at its events and that he is not a distraction from the league’s proclaimed goal of growing the sport and giving it doses of needed energy.“They wanted me to be here, and I said sure,” said Trump, who said that LIV’s contracts with his properties did not require his appearances in events like the pro-am.Perhaps all of that is true. But as long as it is, LIV will linger in the political thicket, no matter how well Koepka plays on the game’s biggest stages. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Golf

      A New Twist for the Tradition-Bound Masters: The LIV Golf Era

      by

      LIV, Saudi Arabia’s breakaway league, split men’s professional golf. Now, the drama is coming to one of the sport’s most hallowed stages.AUGUSTA, Ga. — The mystery started in earnest last spring and lasted until autumn’s twilight. But Phil Mickelson — among the most famous frontmen for LIV Golf, the league bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — insists that he believed he would be allowed to play the 2023 Masters Tournament, which opens Thursday.Never mind any discomfort, or how on-course rivalries had transformed into long-distance furies tinged by politics, power, pride and money. No, Mickelson reasoned, tradition would prevail at Augusta National Golf Club, surely among sports’ safest wagers.“The history of this tournament, the history of the majors, is about bringing the best players together, and it really needs to rise above any type of golf ecosystem disruption,” Mickelson, a three-time Masters winner, said in an interview last month.“I wasn’t really worried,” said Mickelson, who spent the 2022 Masters in a self-imposed sporting exile after he effectively downplayed Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses. But, he allowed, “there was talk” of exclusion from one of golf’s most revered events.Augusta National extinguished the talk on Dec. 20: If a golfer qualified for the Masters through one of its familiar pathways, like being a past champion, his 2023 invitation would be in the mail.The club’s choice will infuse its grounds through at least Sunday, when the tournament is scheduled to conclude, weather permitting. All of the customary narratives that surround a major tournament are bubbling: Will Scottie Scheffler become the first repeat winner in more than two decades? Might Rory McIlroy finally complete the career Grand Slam? Can Jon Rahm regain his dominant winter form? And, as ever, what will Tiger Woods do?But an undercurrent of ambition, curiosity and gentility-cloaked discord is present, too.Dustin Johnson, Mickelson and Harold Varner III, all LIV golf athletes, on the 18th green during a practice round on Tuesday.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFor LIV, the competition will be a breakthrough if one of its players dons the winner’s green jacket. For the PGA Tour, the Masters is an opportunity to showcase that its 72-hole approach to an ancient game is still king. And for Augusta National, the tournament is an opportunity to depict itself as skeptically above golf’s chaotic fray.“At the Champions Dinner, I would not have known that anything was going on in the world of professional golf other than the norm,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said Wednesday, the day after the traditional gathering of past Masters winners.He added: “So I think, and I’m hopeful, that this week might get people thinking in a little bit different direction and things will change.”It was virtually certain that this week would not descend into open brawling, and it has not. Some players have complained about a news media hyperfocus on any potential tensions — and acknowledged that they, too, had wondered about the vibe and contemplated the stakes for their tours.Cameron Smith, at No. 6 the highest-ranked LIV player, said PGA Tour players had greeted him with hugs and handshakes. Asked what, exactly, he had anticipated, he replied: “I wasn’t really sure, to be honest.”He seemed more certain that LIV could use a strong showing on the leaderboards around Augusta National’s hallowed stage.“I think it’s just important for LIV guys to be up there because I think we need to be up there,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of chatter about these guys don’t play real golf; these guys don’t play real golf courses. For sure, I’ll be the first one to say the fields aren’t as strong. I’m the first one to say that, but we’ve still got a lot of guys up there that can play some really serious golf.”Cameron Smith, LIV’s highest-ranked player, said PGA Tour golfers had greeted him with hugs and handshakes.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMcIlroy, seemingly approaching sainthood in the eyes of PGA Tour executives for his steadfast defense of their circuit, said the Masters was “way bigger” than golf’s big spat and that he relished the opportunity to go up against 18 LIV players who are among the world’s finest golfers. Being around them again, he suggested, can build rapport, though he acknowledged restored proximity was not a guarantee of perpetual harmony.“It’s a very nuanced situation and there’s different dynamics,” McIlroy said. Referring to Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, the LIV stars and major winners, he added: “You know, it’s OK to get on with Brooks and D.J. and maybe not get on with some other guys that went to LIV, right?”For its part, Augusta National, whose private membership roster is believed to include at least two former secretaries of state, has sought to tamp down theatrics.Groupings for Thursday and Friday are about the most anodyne possible, at least in the PGA Tour vs. LIV context. Woods and Bryson DeChambeau, who recently suggested that Woods had all but excommunicated him, will not have a reunion at the first tee. Fred Couples, a PGA Tour loyalist who called LIV’s Sergio Garcia a “clown” and Mickelson a “nutbag,” is scheduled to play alongside Russell Henley and Alex Noren. McIlroy is grouped with Sam Burns and Tom Kim.And Ridley said that Augusta National had not invited Greg Norman, the LIV commissioner, to the club, where the leaders of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour have held court in recent days.“The primary issue and the driver there is that I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition,” Ridley said. He said he believed Norman had attended the tournament twice in the last decade, once as a radio commentator.Ridley also sidestepped a query about whether Augusta National had become complicit in “sportswashing” Saudi Arabia’s image.“I certainly have a general understanding of the term,” Ridley said. “I think, you know, it’s for others to decide exactly what that means. These were personal decisions of these players, which I, you know, at a high level, don’t necessarily agree with.”“I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition,” Fred S. Ridley, Augusta National’s chairman, said.Doug Mills/The New York TimesWith tournament play scheduled to begin Thursday morning, the week’s emphasis is rapidly shifting toward the competition itself. The event’s American television broadcasters appear unlikely to dwell on off-course subjects unless they must.“We’re not going to put our heads in the sand,” said Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports, which will broadcast the third and fourth rounds on Saturday and Sunday. “Having said that, unless it really affects the story that’s taking place on the golf course, we’re not going to go out of our way to cover it, and I’m not sure there’s anything that we could add to the story.”ESPN, which will air the tournament’s first two rounds, has suggested it is even less interested in golf’s geopolitical soap opera. Curtis Strange, the two-time U.S. Open champion who is now a commentator, said he didn’t “see us mentioning the Roman numerals at all.”“We have to give respect to the Masters Tournament,” he said. “The only way I could ever see anything coming up — and not even mentioning LIV — but some of these players haven’t played a lot of competitive golf. So how sharp can they be?”LIV golfers have said that they will be prepared for the rigors of the Masters, even though they have been playing 54-hole events, instead of 72, at courses that some doubt will have them ready for Augusta’s challenges.That dynamic will make this year’s tournament more of a proving ground than usual. But there is always next year: When Augusta National released its Masters entry criteria for 2024 on Wednesday, there were no changes that immediately threatened LIV players.Mickelson’s bet was still proving safe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      Hervé Renard Set to Coach France at Women’s World Cup

      by

      Renard has vast experience in Africa and led Saudi Arabia at last year’s World Cup. But he has never coached a women’s team.PARIS — Hervé Renard, a French coach with vast experience in international soccer but none leading a women’s team, was set to be hired to lead a France squad that will be among the favorites at the Women’s World Cup in July.France is expected to announce Renard’s hiring by the end of the week, just over two weeks after the country’s soccer federation fired its longtime women’s coach, Corinne Diacre, in the face of player revolt.Renard, 54, most recently coached Saudi Arabia’s men’s team but announced his departure on Tuesday, hours after the Saudi soccer federation said it had agreed to a French federation request to end his contract immediately.The French soccer federation made no announcement that it had hired Renard, but the Saudi federation’s president, Yasser Al-Misehal, essentially confirmed a deal was in the works when he told a Saudi sports channel on Tuesday night that Renard had been offered the France post and that the coach “expressed his desire to take this opportunity.”Renard’s arrival could be a welcome breath of fresh air for Les Bleues, as the French women’s team is known, but also for the embattled French federation, which will be eager for a fresh start after a leadership change as well as a series of internal conflicts that were threatening to tear apart its star-studded and trophy-chasing women’s team.Time is short: France’s players will have only a matter of months, and a handful of exhibition games, to adapt to Renard before they run out for their Women’s World Cup opener against Jamaica on July 23 in Sydney, Australia.But Renard also will have only a short window to persuade his players that he can adapt his style to them, and to the women’s game. While he has decades of coaching experience in multiple countries, he has not previously coached women at the professional or international level. At least one prominent player agent said that would not be a problem.“As someone who’s known for leading men, I’m sure he’ll have no problem leading women,” Sonia Souid, an agent who represents several players on the French women’s team, said in an interview last week. Souid suggested that Renard’s transition could be seamless as long as he can make the players believe they can succeed.“The real challenge is that Renard will be expected to have immediate results,” she said. “That’s difficult for any coach.”Renard’s most immediate task will be to heal the wounds of a “fractured” group, as the federation called its women’s team in the communiqué that announced Diacre’s departure. Fissures between Diacre and some of her best players broke for good in February, when several top players, including the team captain Wendie Renard and the Paris-St.-Germain star Marie-Antoinette Katoto, announced that they would leave the team and refuse future calls to international duty amid disagreements with the management of Diacre, which they denounced as “nowhere near top-level requirements.”Wendie Renard announced on social media that she had chosen to prioritize her “mental health” by quitting the French team. Two weeks later, Diacre was fired.Hervé Renard has a reputation as an itinerant leader who extracts results from his players and then moves on. He has never stayed more than four years on the same coaching bench in a career that has taken him to Africa, the Middle East, England’s fourth division, France’s Ligue 1 and to local teams in the Algerian and Vietnamese championships.Sharp-jawed and favoring crisp white dress shirts on the sideline, Renard attracted attention and headlines during last year’s World Cup in Qatar, where he led an unheralded Saudi Arabia team stocked with domestic-based players to a stunning group-stage victory over Argentina.A video of an impassioned speech he delivered to his players at halftime of that game racked up millions of views on social media, but also offered a glimpse into both his methods, his passion and his no-nonsense coaching style.His first look at his new team could come within days: France will gather for a training camp next week ahead of a set of friendly matches against Colombia and Canada in early April.As he prepares for the World Cup, Renard will have to work quickly to merge a new generation of talents like Katoto with an older group of players whose international careers came to an abrupt end under Diacre. That latter group includes not only Renard and goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi but also midfielder Amandine Henry, who remains a mainstay of the French powerhouse Olympique Lyonnais Féminin at the age of 33. Henry has not played for France in more than two years, and was left off the national team’s roster by Diacre for last summer’s European Championship in England.That tournament, like so many others, ended in disappointment and frustration for France. Despite its talent, it has never reached the final of a major championship like the World Cup or the Euros or claimed an Olympic medal in its 50 years of existence.Tariq Panja contributed reporting. More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      How Should Fans Feel About Newcastle United?

      by

      Saudi money has revived a Premier League soccer team and sent it to a cup final on Sunday. Those cheering say they shouldn’t have to answer for the source of its recent success.NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, England — As he walked out of the tunnel and onto the field at St. James’ Park, Eddie Howe paused for a beat. Much of the time, Newcastle United’s manager makes a conscious effort to maintain the distance between himself and the effects of his work. It is a natural instinct, a self-defense mechanism.But for once, Howe could not stop himself from taking in the tableau. All around him, the steep banks of seats were filled with striped black-and-white flags. In the Gallowgate, the grandstand that serves as the stadium’s heart and lungs, there were banners for heroes current and past.“A lot of the time, you do separate yourself from some of the feeling around the city,” Howe reflected a couple of hours later. “But it’s good to get an idea of what it means. The view of the stadium, all of the scarves and the flags: It is an incredible place to play.”In recent years, that has not always been the case. For more than a decade, as it bristled under the unpopular and at times deliberately provocative ownership of the British sportswear tycoon Mike Ashley, St. James’ Park stewed in melancholy and resentment and despair.The contrast, these days, is stark. Newcastle has the distinct air of a club going places: possibly to Europe, and the Champions League, by the end of the season; and, more immediately, to Wembley, to face Manchester United in Sunday’s league cup final.On the bitingly cold night in January when Howe’s team confirmed its place in that showpiece, the club unveiled to the crowd Anthony Gordon, a winger acquired from Everton for more than $45 million a couple of days earlier. Clutching a Newcastle scarf and blinking under the floodlights, he seemed just a little taken aback by the fervor of his greeting.“All we saw was relegation,” Manager Eddie Howe said of the club he took over in November 2021. It now sits in fifth place.Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGordon is just the latest in a string of a dozen or so new signings added to the squad at considerable expense in the past year, but that recruitment drive is not the only explanation for Newcastle’s rise.Howe has also reinvented or repurposed many of the players he found when he first arrived: Joelinton, a misfiring forward turned into an all-action midfielder; Sean Longstaff, an academy product given a second chance; and, most spectacularly, Miguel Almirón, an eager but mercurial winger who suddenly, on either side of the World Cup, decided to be the Premier League’s deadliest finisher.That all have flourished, unexpectedly, under Howe has burnished Newcastle’s underdog sheen, one that fits neatly with the club’s and the city’s sense of itself. There is something inherently romantic about the restoration of Newcastle. In one light, it is a rare and precious feel-good story for English soccer. The problem is that, in another, it really isn’t.RevitalizedEvery couple of minutes, Bill Corcoran has to put the brakes on his train of thought to engage another fan wanting to throw a some coins or a folded bank note into his collection bucket. A volunteer for Newcastle’s West End Foodbank, Corcoran greets them all like old friends.He chews the fat with each of them about the evening’s game. Only lowly Southampton, bottom of the Premier League and on the verge of firing its coach for the second time this season, stood in between Newcastle and Wembley. Most of the fans, though, seem suspicious of this state of affairs. A twist, they assume, is coming. Loving a team and trusting it are very different things.In between, without missing a beat, Corcoran returns to the subject at hand. Or, rather, subjects: At various points, he sweeps in the Tasmanian genocide of the 1820s, the relative merits of freeing Julian Assange, the Irish famine and the history of the Mikasa, a 20th-century Japanese battleship. This is not traditional pregame chatter.It is, though, indicative of the strange intellectual territory Newcastle’s fans have found themselves occupying over the last 18 months, ever since their club was purchased by a consortium fronted by the British financier Amanda Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, but backed largely by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s enormous sovereign wealth fund.Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund, has been a regular guest in the owners’ box at Newcastle.Fayez Nureldine/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe deal itself was wreathed in controversy. The Premier League blocked the sale, at first, on the grounds of suspected Saudi involvement in the piracy of its broadcast rights. It only allowed it to go through after it had received “binding assurances” that the P.I.F. was a distinct entity from the Saudi state. (Last week, in a legal dispute over the P.I.F.-backed LIV Golf series, the fund claimed “sovereign immunity” in front of a federal judge in California.)The deal’s eventual approval drew thousands of fans to St. James’ Park in celebration. A smattering waved Saudi flags. A handful wore traditional Saudi dress. The effect was jarring and disorienting: a brutal, repressive autocracy being greeted as liberators from the hated regime of Sports Direct.Since then, the club’s owners have delivered everything the fans could have asked. Howe was appointed as manager. Newcastle has twice broken its transfer record to acquire a new star. It spent more money in last year’s January transfer window than any other club on earth. A team that had been languishing at the foot of the Premier League table has, in the blink of an eye, become a contender.The effect has reverberated beyond the confines of the stadium. “There is a real buzz in the air,” said Stephen Patterson, the chief executive of NE1, which represents the interests of 1,400 businesses across Newcastle’s downtown. “The success has spilled out of the club and into the city itself.”In part, that is to do with a slate of major infrastructure projects getting underway in a city — and a region — that has long felt both underappreciated and underfunded by England’s political and financial power center in London. “The skyline is evidence of investor confidence,” Patterson said. “I’ve never known so much public and private investment in the city.”The soccer team, though, has acted as an accelerant. “It has de-risked a lot of projects,” said Rachel Anderson, the assistant director of policy at the North East England Chamber of Commerce. “Developments that have sat on ice for a long time have come online. The takeover has acted as a catalyst. It makes it easier to raise financing or to greenlight a project.”“There is a real buzz in the air,” a business executive in Newcastle said. “The success has spilled out of the club and into the city itself.”Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat “buzz in the air,” though, has come at a cost. The P.I.F.-led takeover of Newcastle has been condemned by a host of human rights organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, FairSquare.Democracy for the Arab World Now, a group launched by colleagues and friends of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, said that allowing the takeover to go through normalized “a dictator who literally goes around butchering journalists.” Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, said before the deal was announced that she was “horrified” at the prospect of Saudi ownership of an English club.In the same time frame that its team and its city have started to soar, Newcastle has been turned into a cipher for the dangers of sportswashing, accused of being nothing but an attempt by the Saudi state to “distract from serious human rights violations,” as Amnesty put it. Inside Newcastle, the club’s new reality still feels a little like a dream. Outside, it has been cast as something far darker.Moral ArbitersThe day the takeover went through, Charlotte Robson was invited onto a prominent national radio show to discuss the meaning and merit of Newcastle’s new ownership. At one point, she remembers, another member of the panel bemoaned that the club’s fans had allowed it to happen. “It really struck me,” said Robson, a board member of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust. “Because I don’t remember us being given much of a say.”It would be wrong to suggest there has been a uniform response among Newcastle’s fans to their new reality, beyond the fact that absolutely nobody misses Mike Ashley. At times, as the initial celebrations suggested, there have been some who are happy to embrace the links to Saudi Arabia, or at least the iconography of that connection.For many, though, it has been a more complex, considered process. Robson herself would ideally like to see the club owned — at least in part — by the fans. She does not equate being a Newcastle fan with being a “supporter of the nation state of Saudi Arabia.”Striker Chris Wood, acquired last January, in Newcastle’s alternate jersey, which critics gleefully noted is in the colors of the Saudi flag.Ed Sykes/Action Images, via ReutersShe has, though, been able to take pleasure in the club’s rise. “The fact that the majority owners are not especially visible is important,” she said. “That’s been helpful for a lot of fans trying to dissociate the club from the ownership.”So, too, has the nature of the team. The club’s spending has been considerable, but hardly wanton by the bloated standards of the Premier League. What she calls the “redemption story” of the more long-serving members of the squad, meanwhile, has made it feel more organic. “Almirón was signed by Rafa Benítez, three managers ago,” Robson notes. “You can point to the coaching staff and say it’s because of them.”Her instinct, though, is largely that many fans resent the idea that it should fall on them to act as “moral arbiters” for the game, when nobody in a position of power — the Premier League, UEFA, the British government — is prepared to do the same.“The league has a policy dating back years of letting potentially unscrupulous actors in,” she said. “The average fan is a bit put out that it’s apparently their job to object, when all they want to do is watch their team.”That, certainly, is where Corcoran falls on the spectrum. Despite his unprompted disquisition on the many and varied failings of British and American foreign policy, 1820-2023, he insisted he has not had to “persuade himself” to accept the ethical legitimacy of Saudi ownership.All he has seen so far, he said, has been encouraging: The owners have pledged to match whatever donations to the food bank he and his fellow volunteers can raise on matchdays. There have been no edicts passed that contravene his sense of what Newcastle United should represent.St. James’ Park, which stewed in resentment under its former owner, now bounces with life again on matchdays.Lee Smith/Action Images Via Reuters“If they asked us to compromise our morals, we would be the first to protest,” he said. “Newcastle is about being inclusive, being welcoming, open to everybody, and those values will not change. It is not worth being a great team if it comes at the cost of being ourselves.”Not everyone has been able to make that sort of accommodation. “There is no glory in success obtained like this,” said John Hird, a member of NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing, a lobbying group set up in the aftermath of the takeover.Though a vast majority of fans have “respected our right to protest,” Hird said, his group has been regularly falsely smeared — particularly online — as some sort of sleeper cell composed of Sunderland fans, seeking to effect the destruction of Newcastle’s impending golden age.In reality, its aims are a little more modest. Hird said he would like to see the city’s lawmakers, as well as larger, more established fan groups, “make good on their promise to be a critical friend to the Saudi owners.” He would encourage those fans won over by the benefits of the takeover “at least to speak up on human rights.”Though its numbers are small — “we accept we are a minority,” Hird said — the group has done what it can to make its voice heard, staging protests outside St. James’ Park and, last week, delivering a letter to Eddie Howe on behalf of the family of a dissident imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.Thus far, though, it has been lost in the clamor generated by Newcastle’s ascent. Every train south is booked this weekend. St. James’ Park is an “incredible” place to play once more. Newcastle has the air of a club going places. Most fans do not see it as their job to stop and think about how it got there.Lee Smith/Action Images, via Reuters More