The overwhelming feeling that accompanies Newcastle's sad deflation this summer is futility.
Not for what the project has achieved – the Carabao Cup win in 2024, the club’s first silverware since 1969, was worth every penny in supporters’ eyes – but for the broken promises, the waning interest, and the general malaise setting in as the dream fades.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) was doomed to fail from the outset. They must have known it would end like this.
Its fate was always clear, from the ludicrous pomposity of public statements to the timing of the deal at a moment of particular diplomatic importance (during PIF’s accelerated expansion into sport), to, most crucially, the obvious clash between their stated aims and the iron gates of the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (now Squad Cost Ratio).
The goal, they say, was to dramatically expand Newcastle’s commercial revenue by investing in infrastructure projects that are not included in PSR/SCR calculations, revamping the training ground and stadium to create a sustainable super-power income stream.
The reality has been very, very different.
Some outstanding work in the transfer market, much of it made possible by releasing the cash reserves built up under the frugal Mike Ashley, has hidden the reality from the football world (though not from Newcastle supporters) and obscured a basic contradiction at the heart of the PIF project.
Despite all the bluster, at no point have they truly invested in Newcastle – financially or emotionally.
It reveals the true intentions of PIF: geopolitical.
The deal waved eagerly through by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who reportedly personally intervened to ensure a quick sale that avoided scrutiny, had far more to do with building a relationship between two allied nations than it ever did football.
We felt this to be true at the time, yet we also assumed this was a typical sportswashing program with designs to artificially create sporting glory and then bask in its soft power.
That aim looks dubious now, and certainly if it ever was present it was always subject to the whims of the regime, which took a turn two years ago.
Back in 2024, Newcastle chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan made a speech at the Future Investment Initiative Institute in Riyadh in which he declared that Saudi Arabia was “now more focused on the domestic economy”, admitting to a change in strategy that was easy to see as the Saudi Pro League became more active.
When discussing the issues of nation-state ownership and sportswashing we don’t tend to think about the potential frivolousness that results from a football club becoming a mere pawn on a chess board of pieces that make up a complex strategy of international relations.
Nor do we think about how a club like Newcastle might be seen as unimportant and uninteresting to its owners; a mere fragment, unworthy of consistent attention.
The stadium and training ground improvements have moved extremely slowly. The women’s team has stagnated in WSL2.
And now the Newcastle squad is being sold off, piece by piece, at such an alarming rate manager Eddie Howe has resigned from a position more lucrative and reputable than any other he can expect to take in the future.
It does not mean Newcastle will fall any further than last year’s 12th-place finish, however. The absence of European football should boost the club significantly as it did in 2024/25, while the scouting department has once again done well.
Bazoumana Toure is a very talented winger and Aladji Bamba could be a star in central midfield, two potentially excellent deals made all the better for the absurdly high fees Newcastle received for Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali.
Signing two well-regarded goalkeepers fixes one of the biggest issues from last season, and with more transfers expected to come this is, from one angle, the summer of evolution an ageing side needed, particularly one that had perhaps reached its psychological peak with that EFL Cup win and Champions League qualification.
The new manager could complete the picture. Matthias Jaissle is a 38-year-old coach of the German school of high pressing and direct football, a figure who could re-energise a young team and find the right balance for players like Anthony Elanga and Will Osula.
There is still talent in depth at Newcastle and, with a more proactive tactician at the helm, this summer could prove to be the jolt they needed rather than a step backwards.
Nevertheless, a significant step forward feels almost impossible. And this is the real cost of sportswashing projects, of ownership by groups so wealthy that money is no object. Football clubs as collateral.
This was not the intention of the Premier League’s financial rules, but it is an unintended consequence. If investment is severely restricted in order to comply with basic annual bookkeeping (that treats running a multi-billion-pound organisation the same as managing the accounts of a corner shop) then serious investors are put off by the limits on organic growth.
The only viable candidates left are those with other purposes, other personal victories beyond capital.
The future of the Premier League depends upon whether Saudi Arabia see their time at Newcastle as valuable or not, as rehabilitative of their image and satisfying as a cultural and political tool.
Assuming the club could easily be sold tomorrow for more than they purchased it for, they would almost certainly answer in the affirmative, inviting other nations to copy them.
There is nothing Newcastle fans can do about it, no matter how painful the dismantling has been this summer. But if there is hope, it comes in the form of Gianni Infantino’s fall.
Something is stirring; a political moment emerging with a rare appetite to seize it.
Clamping down on the kind of deals that sold Newcastle to Saudi Arabia won’t be easy and won’t be successfully blocked by the independent regulator. The money and the power are too great for that.
But victory could be achieved on the biggest stage of all. A week ago FIFA was the last place one might expect the wheels of justice to turn. But with March’s elections suddenly re-energised, a generational moment can be glimpsed.
Newcastle’s will be among the supporters most ardently in favour of revolution.
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