Saudi Arabia is problematic – but it’s the cash cow the Premier League needs

There is probably more chance of Saudi Arabia buying up San Francisco’s Pride festival and moving it to Riyadh than a football club taking a firm moral stance about who it deals with.

While any club is being taken advantage of when it becomes the symbol of a sportswashing operation, others that feed off the same scheme are taking advantage of its resources. That adds credibility to any mission and, ultimately, hastens normalisation.  

This is not my way of telling you to lay off Saudi-owned Newcastle United or suggesting that state ownership or state sponsorship is exactly the same as bargaining with states — especially in the wake of the British government inviting Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, to the United Kingdom for a state visit later this year. But it is on the same scale and these are all willing participants.

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And for football clubs across Europe, Saudi presents opportunity. There might be moral inconvenience but, economically, the new world the country is creating is very convenient indeed.

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Clubs look after themselves and if the money coming from Saudi gets a player a club doesn’t want — or is prepared to sell provided the fee is sufficiently inflated — off the books, they’ll do it, regardless of any inclusivity campaign they’ve designed themselves.

Chelsea certainly did not balk at the prospect of doing business with the Saudis when it came to selling Kalidou Koulibaly (£17million to Al Hilal) and Edouard Mendy (£16m to Al Ahli). Indeed, there were even claims that it was a strategy cooked up through supposed existing relationships between the Public Investment Fund, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, and