We should know by now that righteous outrage is futile, that morality, no matter how heavily weaponised or justified, crumbles at the feet of the Saudi riyal.
What is another round of anguished hand-wringing by the virtuous at the awarding of the World Cup to a country that has already thrown more than a trillion dollars at sporting projects in one form or another?
The architect of this monstrous outlay, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS), laughed when questions of sportswashing were put to him by a Fox News reporter in September.
“If sportswashing (is) going to increase my GDP by 1 per cent, then we’ll continue doing sportswashing,” he said. And why wouldn’t you when it works so well?
Fifa president Gianni Infantino is only the latest in a long list of stooges prepared to do MBS’s bidding. Step forward Newcastle manager Eddie Howe, who told us he felt unable to comment on the internal matters of a Saudi state that pays his wages through the world’s biggest public investment fund [PIF], yet was, surprise, surprise sufficiently well-informed to give his backing to another disruptive, off-set World Cup in 2034.
Reflecting on his trips to Riyadh and Jeddah with Newcastle, Howe crowed: “Everywhere we went was well organised, we were well looked after. If that’s a sign of what a World Cup might look like, structurally it will be really good.”
Last week it was our own world champion boxer Tyson Fury heaping obsequious credit on his Saudi hosts for the gold-plated treatment he received during his short stay in the kingdom; no queues at customs, tea with government officials, etc, all of which ended with a “shout out to the big man himself, MBS”.
For Fury read Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Sadio Mane, Jordan Henderson et al, footballing totems brought in to wave the Saudi flag.
Their experience of Saudi largesse contrasts sharply, of course, with groups not quite so favoured, including women in the kingdom oppressed by male guardianship, the LBGTQ+ community, who face death if convicted of same sex relations, and foreign workers, who toil in inhospitable conditions without any of the labour protections and rights any civilised state would recognise.
Before Saudi Arabia bought sport to manipulate the world view, it subverted western governments. It is the tacit approval provided through diplomatic and commercial channels that effectively waves through deals to host World Cups, own major golf tours, acquire grands prix, boxing events, tennis tournaments, WWE, cricket, and even the Asian Winter Games at a $500bn (£412bn) winter venue not yet built.
Infantino’s sanction of Saudi Arabia, within a year of the last World Cup in the region, is the logical conclusion of a process that continues unseen around diplomatic tables and boardrooms of major international banks and global business conglomerates. Yes folks, money makes the world go round.
The difference is banks, big business and big government see no need to apologise for their engagement with regimes like Saudi Arabia that abuse human rights and offend our sensibilities, because they are not held to account so publicly.
That is not the fate of sportsmen, who do Saudi Arabia’s bidding willingly, paid puppets of a regime that has no real interest in sport for its own sake but understands its power as a propaganda tool that profits from the ignorance of people far removed from the reality of Saudi lived experience.
We are fed daily bulletins from the Saudi Pro League, a key feature of the normalising process. Whilst fans consume the febrile content of a match between Al-Nassr and Al-Ettifaq, for example, which saw Henderson and Ronaldo involved in some argy-bargy or other, what is essentially a police state continues its oppression and abuse of citizens.
More than 100 executions have taken place this year according to Amnesty International, many were under the age of 18 when charged and later convicted of offences as trivial as protesting on the internet.
But heh, Fury cannot wait to return to his see-no-evil, hear-no-evil utopia in February to fight Oleksandr Usyk, and Howe boasts the 2034 World Cup will be a resounding success. This is what a trillion bucks buys you, a blind eye and uncritical obedience.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/g6abHW0
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