Selling players to Saudi Arabia

[Monkey Tennis]

21 minutes ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

The question to be asked here is what do the Saudi’s expect to gain from this.

most punditry and opinion pieces see this as either sports washing or an attempt to supplant one or all of the big European leagues 

The former presupposes that the Saudi government cares what you or I think of them and the second feels like English football trying to make the whole story all about them

A third reading is that this is really just bread and circuses being thrown at the Saudi public to try and keep them docile

Of course one reading doesn’t invalidate the others but I prefer the last one

 

There's an interesting Long Read podcast from The New Statesman this week about 'How Saudi Arabia is buying the world'.

It pretty much identifies sport as a tiny, tiny cog in a much bigger programme.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

22 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

There's an interesting Long Read podcast from The New Statesman this week about 'How Saudi Arabia is buying the world'.

It pretty much identifies sport as a tiny, tiny cog in a much bigger programme.

https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2023/07/saudi-arabia-capitalsim-buying-world

 

[Sergeant Wilson]

11 hours ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2023/07/saudi-arabia-capitalsim-buying-world

 

Give it a try, they can't make a worse job of running the country than our own lot. Their royal family seem nicer than ours as well.

[Monkey Tennis]

 

This is a decent piece in The Guardian.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/02/football-saudi-arabia-big-money-cristiano-ronaldo

[Nowhereman]

The money is immoral enough but it’s worth reminding ourselves that this is a country which lured a journalist in to their embassy in a foreign country and openly executed him 

[Ranaldo Bairn]

1 hour ago, Nowhereman said:

The money is immoral enough but it’s worth reminding ourselves that this is a country which lured a journalist in to their embassy in a foreign country and openly executed him 

Let's not pretend the UK has not done similar, and still is world leading at the dark arts.

[Jacky1990]

3 hours ago, Nowhereman said:

The money is immoral enough but it’s worth reminding ourselves that this is a country which lured a journalist in to their embassy in a foreign country and openly executed him 

Now do the UK and America...

[Nowhereman]

11 hours ago, Jacky1990 said:

Now do the UK and America...

As far as I am aware neither the UK or American governments fund football teams. The Saudi government do

[VincentGuerin]

14 hours ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

Let's not pretend the UK has not done similar, and still is world leading at the dark arts.

 

12 hours ago, Jacky1990 said:

Now do the UK and America...

What fantastic arguments these would be if the CIA or MI6 owned fitba clubs.

[coprolite]

16 minutes ago, Nowhereman said:

As far as I am aware neither the UK or American governments fund football teams. The Saudi government do

True if you discount tax relief for interest payments on leveraged buyouts and stringent IP protection.

[Guest]

There's so much wealth in USA for these business owners to hoover up because the US state since the end of WW2 has controlled the global economy. They've used blunt military force to do that sometimes via coercion and plenty other times via direct violence. The economic system they've enforced has ensured the extraction of Global South resources at minimal cost to USA and its few Global North pals. Liverpool owner John Henry could only siphon off so much money from the US stock market because the machinations of the US state has ensured global wealth flows into that market. Henry hasn't produced anything of value to anyone. He's just taken from the profits US companies engineer. Underpinning that is the mass exploitation of Global South labour; that's your children in sweat shops, down cobalt mines or in cocoa plantations. Even institutions like the IMF, with "International" in their name to feign neutrality, are headquartered in Washington. 

As a separate point, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi should not be the go-to example of the Saudi government's malevolence. The mass murder of Yemeni peasants, ongoing since 2015, is the far greater crime. What Saudi have done to Yemen is an example of them following the rules, though, hence they got UK and US backing for it. Murdering Khashoggi was breaking the rules so it was bad. That's how ridiculous the Washington/London "liberal" worldview is.