Newcastle United, Manchester City

Newcastle v Manchester City – two English football teams, two Middle Eastern allies

Jack Pitt-Brooke
Dec 18, 2021

The strongest alliance in the Middle East over the last decade has been that between Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and effective ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince and ruler of Saudi Arabia. They see the region the same way, and were on the same side in the war in Yemen and the blockade of Qatar. MBZ even helped MBS to ascend to power and sideline his rivals.

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On Sunday, thousands of miles from the Gulf, the two football teams associated with the two ruling families will meet at St James’ Park.

Manchester City, owned by Sheikh Mansour, MBZ’s brother, chaired by Khaldoon Al Mubarak, one of his key advisors, have been a significant part of Abu Dhabi’s soft power policy since the 2008 takeover. They have been the ultimate proxy brand for Abu Dhabi, promoting the emirate with every trophy they lift.

Two months ago, MBS finally followed his regional allies into football, when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund completed a protracted takeover of Newcastle United, now owning 80 per cent of the club. The Premier League insisted that they have “legally binding assurances” that Saudi Arabia will not control Newcastle United. MBS himself is not on the club’s board. In practice, however, the PIF is directed by MBS.

The question now is whether Newcastle can emulate the success and dominance that City have had, 13 years after their takeover. It will certainly be harder, simply because it has already been done before, and the Premier League is more stratified now than it was in 2008. It will be even harder than that if Newcastle are relegated this season. In a sense the Saudi investment in Newcastle is paying a price for being 13 years behind their more imaginative neighbours.

Fans and pundits often talk about wanting to keep “politics out of football” but this is now one of the most inherently political games anywhere in sport. Nothing tells us more about modern Premier League football — its global projection, its openness to foreign wealth — than the fact that these two teams are in these hands. And as both states face accusations of “sportswashing” their human rights records, it raises questions about why Premier League clubs are so attractive to owners like these.

Mohammed bin Salman Al-Saud (L) is welcomed by National Security Advisor of United Arab Emirates, Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan (R) in Abu Dhabi earlier this month. (Photo: Royal Court of Saudi Arabia/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The relationship between MBZ and MBS goes back to before MBS took total control of Saudi Arabia. He even owes some of his rise to power to his mentor in Abu Dhabi.

In January 2015, MBS’s father Salman became king, and MBS was appointed defence minister at the age of 29. One month later MBS launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, putting together a coalition in which MBZ and the UAE were partners. (UAE forces were redeployed away from the war in 2019.)

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MBZ saw something that he liked in the ambitious young prince. “MBZ and the people around him identified MBS as a younger version of himself,” says Dr Kristian Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at Rice University. “MBZ identified MBS as someone who wasn’t afraid to take risks or think outside the box. Basically, a can-do figure, someone who could transform Saudi Arabia. And there was, at the beginning, a mentor/mentee relationship as well.”

What also united MBZ and the young MBS was their shared view of the region. They both had an antipathy towards Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood and a suspicion towards Qatar. They shared an anxiety about the “Arab Spring” and the removal of Hosni Mubarak as Egyptian president in 2011, and both supported General Sisi who took over in Egypt in 2014.

“In Mohammed bin Salman, MBZ saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to forge a deeper alliance with his much bigger, more powerful neighbour,” write Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck in their book Blood and Oil. “Not only could Mohammed put an end to Saudi Arabia’s regressive ways, but together they could be a major force in global foreign policy and perhaps begin to build a better future for the region.”

So MBZ took it upon himself to tell his allies that MBS was someone to get behind. After Donald Trump won the US presidential election in 2016, MBZ had a meeting with his team at Trump Tower to discuss the new administration’s Middle East policy. And MBZ encouraged the Trump team to meet MBS and trust him as the future of Saudi Arabia, and the key to American plans for the region.

“As it was coming from someone like MBZ, who was already a senior figure in the partnership with the Gulf countries, that meant they (the US and UK) took MBS seriously,” says Dr Ulrichsen. “MBZ was the one opening doors at the beginning and saying: this guy may be young, but he’s a figure you will have to work with, so you’d better get to know him.”

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With backing from the UAE and the USA, MBS was able to sideline his domestic opponents and, in June 2017, was appointed crown prince. That same month, MBS and MBZ (who go on falconry expeditions together) led a blockade of Qatar, cutting off diplomatic and financial ties and blocking Qatari planes from their airspace. Trump blamed Qatar for “funding radical ideology”.

The blockade only ended earlier this year. MBS was recently photographed with the Emir of Qatar, and Tahnoon bin Zayed (another brother of Sheikh Mansour and MBZ), signalling a rapprochement in the region. But the alliance between MBZ and MBS, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, has been one of the defining factors in the Middle East over the last few years. Many allies distanced themselves from MBS after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but the UAE did not.

“We have never been as close allies, as we are right now, in all of our history,” says Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science from the UAE. “This has been evolving for maybe the past five years. The two countries are on the same page with regard to nearly all regional issues.”

Mohammed bin Salman (L) is toured around Expo 2020 Dubai by the UAE’s deputy prime minister Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (R) earlier this month (Photo: AFP)

The other very obvious thing that unites Saudi Arabia and the UAE is their oil wealth. And with it, the challenge of how best to turn that money into power. Saudi Arabia has always been the biggest and most powerful country in the region. But for the UAE, which is much smaller, there has been an emphasis on soft power, to change their image in the eyes of the world.

For Dr Ulrichsen, this goes back to a 2006 incident when political backlash in the US blocked the takeover of six American ports by the Dubai-based DP World. “It really focused peoples’ minds in the UAE that they had to be very proactive about trying to change the image. This was about the time MBZ was becoming prominent, he became crown prince in 2004. They really began to re-double their messaging, and their image moves after 2006.”

There are many different ways for the UAE to sell themselves to the world. Professor Abdulla points to the relative advancement of women’s rights in the UAE compared to their neighbours, the global popularity of the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and the success of Emirates and Etihad airlines. “We have so many of these success stories to be proud of,” he says.

But perhaps the most prominent soft power tool of all came when Abu Dhabi’s investments took them into sport. “They began to see the soft power of sport as a way of reaching an audience,” says Dr Ulrichsen, “which no amount of political messaging could ever hope to do. A lot of their political messaging was focused on the US congress, a very narrow political elite. This they saw as a way to reach a much wider audience.”

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Back in August 2008, Garry Cook was desperately looking for a buyer to buy Thaksin Shinawatra out of Manchester City. Amanda Staveley and her firm PCP Capital had already been working with Sheikh Mansour on a bailout of Barclays that year. And Cook and Staveley were put in touch.

As first reported in Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg’s book The Club, Cook presented for 45 minutes to Staveley and Ali Jassim (another Sheikh Mansour advisor) just before City’s game against West Ham United at what is now the Etihad Stadium on August 24, 2008. “If you’re developing your nation and you’re looking to be on the global stage,” Cook told Staveley, “we are your proxy brand for the nation.” One week later the Abu Dhabi United Group — headed by Sheikh Mansour — had bought the club.

More than 13 years on from that meeting that changed the course of football, Cook has been proven right. Manchester City FC has proven to be the best possible proxy brand for the people who run Abu Dhabi. It is not the only sporting tool that they have at their disposal, as the thrilling finish to the Formula One season at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last Sunday can prove. But there is nothing quite like football, and specifically a Premier League team, to get in front of the eyes of the world.

The fact that Khaldoon Al Mubarak soon became City chairman was a clear indication of how the investment was inherently political, rather than this simply being the passion project of one rich man. Khaldoon is one of the most trusted lieutenants of MBZ himself, and saw City as a way to tell the world a story about Abu Dhabi.

“This is telling a lot to the world about how we are,” Khaldoon told David Conn in his book Richer Than God. “It is showing the world how we are handling this project, the true essence of who Abu Dhabi is and what Abu Dhabi is about.”

Since the takeover City have spent well over £1 billion, and have won the Premier League five times, the FA Cup twice and the League Cup six times. They have set a new standard in English football, breaking the record points and goals tallies in the 2017-18 season, the first of a run of three titles in four years. Pep Guardiola’s side have been involved in a rivalry with Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool that has been the pinnacle of club football anywhere in the world. The one thing that City have not conquered yet is Europe, although they did reach the Champions League earlier this year and are among the favourites for this year’s competition.

City fans at a friendly match between Al Ain and Manchester City in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates (Photo: Warren Little/Getty Images)

And what have the Al Nahyan family got out of it so far? In one sense there is the reflected glory of having built arguably the best football team in the world over the last five to 10 years.

Then there is the fact that Sheikh Mansour in particular and Abu Dhabi, in general, are simply better known and more popular in Manchester and among Manchester City fans than they would otherwise have any right to be. The “Manchester thanks you Sheikh Mansour” banner at the Etihad Stadium is proof of that, as in a different way are the links between the owners and Manchester City Council.

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Arguably most important of all is the fact that the football team serves as the best brand ambassadors that money can buy. The power of football as a PR tool is that Abu Dhabi do not actually have to speak for themselves. They do not have to stage a grand prix or even impress people with Etihad Airways. All they had to do is build the best football team on the planet and now they have what Garry Cook called “a proxy brand for the nation”. And one that reaches far more people than any PR campaign ever could.

“It’s been a huge success every way you look at it,” says Professor Abdulla. “Financially it has been hugely rewarding. And in terms of soft power projection, it has been a huge success for the Abu Dhabi brand.”

Of course, there is another very serious side to this, which is the accusation that the Abu Dhabi ownership of City — much like the Saudi ownership of Newcastle — constitutes “sportswashing”. This new term broadly means states with bad human rights records using sports investments to launder their global reputation. The situations are not precisely the same, but human rights groups have been critical of UAE and Saudi Arabia in recent years, relating not just to the war in Yemen but also to their attitudes to dissent and minority rights within their own borders.

It has raised the question whether these football investments exist in part to distract the world from the reality of conditions in the state where the money comes from. And whether the successful football team serves as a PR counterbalance from the criticism that these states face. The argument goes that the reason that the “proxy brand” is so important is because the brand would otherwise be toxic.

The term “sportswashing” was barely in circulation in 2008 but it has grown in prominence as conditions on the ground have deteriorated. “The UAE, back in 2008, was relatively open,” says Dr Ulrichsen. “Human rights issues have got considerably worse since 2008, especially since the Arab Spring. So the UAE in 2008 didn’t have the same human rights stigma perhaps that they would have now.”

Amnesty International’s report from last year says that “over two dozen prisoners of conscience” were detained in the UAE. Ahmed Mansoor, the UAE’s most famous human rights campaigner, has been in prison since 2017. A Human Rights Watch report this year said that Mansoor is being held in solitary confinement without a mattress or a pillow. It took two hunger strikes for the authorities to allow Mansoor “access to sunlight and exercise three times a week”. HRW also reports “arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances and torture” used by UAE state security forces against dissidents and activists, as part of a policy of “effectively crushing any space for dissent”.

Amnesty also reported that “the state continued to restrict freedom of expression, taking measures to silence citizens and residents who expressed critical opinions on COVID-19 and other social and political issues”. They report on “at least 10 people” who have been arbitrarily detained after completing prison sentences, including one man who was due for release in 2017.

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The same report says of Saudi Arabia that “repression of the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly intensified” in 2020, and that “virtually all known Saudi Arabian human rights defenders inside the country were detained or imprisoned at the end of the year”. The Athletic has reported in detail about the reality of life for LGBT people in Saudi Arabia.

In that context, and the international outrage against MBS following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it makes even more sense that Saudi Arabia would want to try to launder its image in this way.

Through the last 10 years, Saudi Arabia has sat on its hands and watched as first Abu Dhabi and then Qatar have bought their way into football. (Qatar owns Paris Saint-Germain and of course will host the World Cup next year.) Saudi Arabia is the most powerful country in the region but has got no visible stake in the most popular entertainment product on earth.

Pep Guardiola meets Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak in Abu Dhabi in 2018 (Photo: Victoria Haydn/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)

It was inevitable that MBS would want his own foothold in football, and the only surprise was that it took him until this year to get it. “Success is contagious,” says Professor Abdulla, “so Saudi Arabia wants to do the same as Abu Dhabi, just as Qatar did when it bought PSG.” He finally got it this year when his PIF acquired 80 per cent of Newcastle, another deal with Staveley at the heart of it.

For Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi, the motivation is not just international but also domestic, in part to impress the Saudi population, and maybe even to improve football in the kingdom. “Football is the sport in Saudi Arabia,” he says. “Saudis are totally absorbed, like many other countries, with football. They would feel flattered that their country has been able to acquire a Premier League team. The Abu Dhabi people thought of that first, and the Saudi Arabian people have learned from them.”

The problem for Saudi Arabia, of course, is that Abu Dhabi got there first. The Premier League was clearly more ripe for a takeover like this back in 2008, when even the richest teams were not quite as stratified away as they are now. The City takeover was only five years after Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea, at a much earlier stage in the development of the financial landscape. What was then in flux now feels settled, and so Newcastle will have far further to travel than City did 13 years ago.

Overall this speaks to a bigger issue between the two allies. The UAE has been more successful in diversifying its economy and investments away from oil and towards other sectors. Saudi Arabia has moved slower in this direction, and nothing proves that better than the 13-year head start Abu Dhabi has in football.

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“They’re both diversifying into the same things,” explains Dr Ulrichsen. “UAE has led the way in the last 20 years in tourism, travel, entertainment and hospitality. And the Saudis are now trying to move into that same area. Which means that they are directly trying to compete with the regional leader, which has had a 20-year head start. That’s why we’re seeing great economic competition, because the Saudis are trying to muscle in on the UAE’s head start. This is an example of being left far behind, and they’re trying to play catch-up.”

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Tom Slator)

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Jack Pitt-Brooke

Jack Pitt-Brooke is a football journalist for The Athletic based in London. He joined in 2019 after nine years at The Independent.