The Sneer At Newcastle United With A Big Blind Spot

It was simple. Newcastle United just wanted it more.

Whether it was Joelinton storming back and rag-dolling Jarell Quansah to the turf or Aleskander Isak being sharper to Jacob Murphy’s knockdown than Virgil Van Dijk, the Magpies were always ahead of Liverpool at last weekend’s Carabao Cup final.

If any of the men in black and white lacked motivation, the merest glances to the fans who’d traveled in their droves from the North-east would refuel them in an instant.

The Premier League leaders may consider the Carabao Cup fourth on a list of Liverpool FC priorities.

But this was not the case for Newcastle United.

The League Cup represented the opportunity to heave the biggest monkey in English soccer off the back of an endlessly sleeping giant. Before victory at Wembley, it had been an incredible 70 years since the Geordies traveled south and emerged with a trophy.

As Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville put it, something in the air seemed to propel Newcastle to victory.

“They gave Liverpool a real going over in every single way,” he said postgame.

“Obviously the emotion of the occasion, I even felt quite emotional when that second goal went in. I don’t know why

“They got that balance right between passion and emotion, and playing with their heads because that was the question before the game: ‘Could Newcastle play with their heads? Would they get carried away?’

“This expectation of 70 years, honestly it was a really special day and it was a special performance.”

But the moralistic sneer didn’t take long to enter the postgame analysis.

Newcastle United fans will be used to the fact that they aren’t allowed to enjoy these occasions before sports journalists’ chin-stroking moral indignation takes hold.

And this occasion was no different.

“As a lover of football, it is natural to feel delight for all those Newcastle fans who have waited a lifetime to see their beloved team win a trophy,” wrote Oliver Kay in The Athletic.

“As a lover of football, it is also natural to feel profound discomfort and regret that this great club’s moment of triumph came under the ownership of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which, according to Human Rights Watch, “has facilitated and benefited from human rights abuses” while investing in international sporting institutions “to whitewash the reputational harm.”

“As discussed at the time of the Newcastle takeover in 2021, this is all part of the ugliness of modern football — particularly in England, where the authorities have repeatedly turned a blind eye, happy to accept investment from almost any source, seemingly unworried by the strings attached.”

The criticism from Barney Ronay at The Guardian was even more biting.

“Two things can be true simultaneously. Newcastle United winning a first major domestic trophy in 70 years is a euphoric feelgood story for the fans. This is true. That same trophy is also a first significant victory for the Saudi Arabian regime harnessing all this untamed human feeling to wash the blood and cruelty from its hands. This is also true,” he wrote.

“Does it still feel OK? Is there an aftertaste? Perhaps something very slightly acid? This would be only human. That extraordinary outpouring around Wembley is also, like it or not, a piece of targeted public theatre, the good intertwined with the bad, that thing you love being piggybacked by dictator state ambition, a kind of BurnSaw/BoneSaw dynamic in action.

“It is important to recognize none of this is the fault of Newcastle’s supporters. The entire process is an act of macro-violence towards sport, clubs, leagues and fans, one in which the football authorities and UK government are complicit.”

Its hard to know exactly when soccer writers felt the need to begin discussing geopolitics in the postgame analysis. There’s a fair case to say the world around them changed in the mid-2010s to the point that it simply became untenable to separate the two.

If we’re talking about the mainstream discourse, then the World Cup in Qatar really turned up the volume.

There’s nothing wrong with sports journalism’s attention to the bigger picture. The trouble is that it rarely demonstrates the balance or self-examination such stances require.

Kay’s piece was titled “Newcastle’s moment of triumph felt so wholesome. But we still need to talk about why it wasn’t perfect” – that by any measure is a ridiculously lofty premise.

No victory can meet those standards, and with the benefit of hindsight, even those celebrated for their purity fail the ‘perfect’ test badly.

Leicester City’s 2014 title win, for instance, depicted by the British media as the epitome of sporting meritocracy, has been tainted by a dispute over the Foxes’ financial overspending to get into the Premier League to begin with.

Or Portsmouth’s 2008 FA Cup triumph saw owner Sacha Gaydamak walk around the Wembley turf holding the trophy with coach Harry Redknapp. Years later, he’d become embroiled in a bitter financial dispute with administrators as the club battled to stay afloat.

But what must stick in the craw of Newcastle fans is that Oliver Kay was writing profile pieces of Roman Abramovich in 2015 with no ounce of the “profound discomfort” he now feels about club owners.

Regardless of Russia invading Ukraine a year earlier, the only details Kaye wanted to share in that piece were about the amount of money he spent on security and how his children were being ‘anglicized.’

It feels unfair to scrutinize Kay alone, who has re-examined the Chelsea owner since. He’s one of many Western soccer writers following a similar trajectory into this bizarre moral maze.

My issue with him is that he does not continuously address the British media blindspot with Chelsea or, to name just one example, the lack of scrutiny regarding Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Chinese ownership when making those critiques of Newcastle.

If you will try and taint victory for Newcastle United fans at least have the decency to examine your past output in the same piece.

Compared to politics, especially geopolitics, writing about sports is far easier and less consequential.

If you blend the two, roll your sleeves up and get fully stuck into the mess, your mess in particular.