I’m Saudi and I thought my perspective may be relevant to the discussion.
First of all, I’m part of a very small minority here who only follow European football (only United matches really, don’t have much time for anything else) but I think I can speak about football community in Saudi.
Saying Saudis love football is in by itself an understatement. Football is most Saudis favorite hobby, sport and TV Show (mostly men, but women have also lately joined the fun). Almost everyone you meet follows a team (some with burning passion, so much so it’s illegal to ensue sport rivalries by speaking ill about other teams in a sports channel or a public forums).
There are 4 big teams in the league (from Riyadh, Al Hilal and Al Nasser, from Jeddah, Al Ahli and Al Ittehad).
Al Hilal is the most decorated team winning Asian equivalent of champions league several times. But locally, competition is always fierce and it’s hard to predict who will win.
I personally don’t like state backed football clubs (be it Saudi backed or otherwise). I think it sucks all the fun out of it. But that ship have sailed and I don’t think we’ll go back to the good old days any time soon.
Saudi national team have always underachieved in the World Cup. I believe this is part of the reason for the recent trend of getting expert great players who can share experience with Saudi players. I don’t know what exactly is the endgame of all these transfers, but knowing my country in the past 5 years, everything is actually part of a bigger plan put in advance. Saudi always plans with a 2030 horizon for everything.
is it sport washing?
I hate the term, I do believe that Saudi is promoting itself through sports (don’t see anything wrong in that as long as the competition is fair -which currently isn’t but not because of Saudi alone-).
I do believe there’s a grander plan for everything we’re seeing. It could be developing the National team, improving the sports infrastructure and even tackling obesity by getting more people into sports (alongside diversification of the economy, attracting tourists, getting more revenues, better global image…etc.)
Saudi before and after 2017 aren’t the same countries (I know because I left the country to the west not planning to come back as I lost hope in Saudi’s future, but came back in 2017 as I liked the country new direction).
Saudi is very serious about diversifying the economy before 2030 and thus, every single coin it spends is planned ahead and calculated based on a concrete strategy and clear objectives.
will this spending continue?
who knows, all I’m sure of is that there’re concrete and clear KPIs that need to be achieved, and there’re plan B and C for every scenario we can think of. Even if it fails, Saudi know when to pull the plug and try something else. Keep in mind that the main investor behind all these clubs (including Newcastle) is the Saudi Sovereign fund that has clear financial KPIs (announced). It has to get ROI sooner or later (probably before 2030).
