Cathedral City
Newcastle and the Saudis - Part One
The city of Newcastle has two cathedrals.
One, dating back to 1350, is dedicated to St Nicholas, and is known for its collection of bells which include ‘The Major’, a six tonne whopper.
As you might expect, it makes a holy racket, but even at full peal it can’t compete with the cacophony generated a mile away at an even more celebrated place of worship - St James Park, home of Newcastle United FC, the city’s other ‘cathedral’.
When it comes to noise, think Spinal Tap. It’s a stadium where, when ‘The Toon’ are in full cry, the volume is turned up to 11 by full throated Geordies roaring on their heroes.
The idea that football is a religion in the North East isn’t new, but it’s impossible to avoid.
Players here don’t have to wait centuries for sainthood; there’s no stamp of approval from a bloke in Rome weighing up stories of miracles. Canonisation happens in the instant, conferred by a fervent 52,000-strong congregation, always ready to anoint living mortals.
Shearer, Beardsley, Gazza, Keegan, Cole, Joelinton - these are the saints venerated by the faithful.
It helps that there's no other senior club within the city limits, but there’s also something about the industrial grain of Tyneside - the shipyards, the coal mines - that seems to have infused the local population with a fanatical devotion to their team.
Most of the dirty, capricious occupations that gave the place its working class identity have long since disappeared but the football mania is a constant.
Yet it’s nearly a century since Newcastle last won the league title and their most recent FA Cup success was in 1955.
For years, the club seemed trapped in a kind of sepia tinted purgatory, harking back to bygone glories.
Would a saviour ever come to restore their former glories?
The prayers of the ‘Geordie Nation’ were finally answered in October 2021, when new owners boasting prodigious wealth miraculously appeared. All hail.
Like others before them, they talked up the potential of the club, and crucially they had the means to fulfil their promises.
Supporters looked forward to a football paradise on earth; aspiring to a kind of nirvana, without having to go through all that tiresome dying stuff first.
But the devil was in the detail.
Newcastle’s new ownership consortium was led by Saudi Arabia’s mega rich Public Investment Fund, the benign face of a regime that ruthlessly suppresses human rights and shuts down opposition voices.
Success on the football field was all but guaranteed, thanks to Riyadh’s enormous wealth.
But to many observers beyond the North East, the Toon were no longer on the side of the angels.