It was easy to forget about Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record when Yasir Al-Rumayyan joined the Newcastle United players celebrating the Carabao Cup final win over Liverpool on the Wembley pitch.
Why wouldn’t Al-Rumayyan, the club’s chairman, want to revel in ending a 70-year domestic trophy drought for one of the country’s best-followed clubs? He had paid for it, after all.
The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF), which he also chairs, has bankrolled the team by more than half-a-billion pounds – the seventh most expensively assembled squad in the country.
And there Al-Rumayyan was, the giant staff photo on the Wembley pitch, Eddie Howe, the manager, out so far right you can barely see him, Al-Rumayyan front and centre, fist raised, inches away from the trophy, the backdrop thousands of Newcastle fans with scarves, provided by Saudi club sponsor Sela, held aloft.
And there he was, again, alone and holding the trophy high. And why not?
Pointing out the links between Newcastle’s chairman and the repressive Middle Eastern regime he works for, is not designed purely to dismiss the feelings of ecstasy and relief that swept from the thousands of fans in the stadium to the black-and-white city 250 miles away in the North-east.
This cup win is wonderful for them, ending one of the most painful periods of failure in sporting history, but equally grim for what the Premier League, the apex of English football, has become: a place for anyone with vast wealth to channel it into one of the most watched entertainment products on the planet and in return share the bright glow of glory.
For decades nobody really discussed where all the money came from that Roman Abramovich spent on Chelsea, even though his Wikipedia page has an entire section devoted to “controversies”.
Then when Russia launched the war against Ukraine on European soil it quickly became apparent he had strong links to Vladimir Putin, which Abramovich denies.
Three years after selling the club and insisting he would claim none of the proceeds for himself, the £2.5bn remains frozen in a bank account, having helped no Ukrainian victims of war.
Abramovich always stated he wanted the funds to go towards all victims of the war, including Russians. And, well, funnily enough the UK government isn’t all that keen on the idea.
Slightly more was said about Manchester City’s owners – but it took years for the message from human rights groups to sink in that the Abu Dhabi takeover was a sportswashing project for a country that exploits migrant labour and imprisons critics.
We now await the decision of the independent commission on charges relating to the Premier League’s financial fair play rules.
Al-Rumayyan poses for a photo with Newcastle’s assistant manager Jason Tindall (Photo: Getty)
It’s all been too little, too late. Or maybe futile all along.
To maintain status as the most popular football league in the world the Premier League has opened its arms to the highest bidders, regardless of background and history.
And all signs point to this being the start of a new dawn at Newcastle, rather than a club punching upward about to be jabbed to bits by rivals above signing all their best players, as is often the case in moments like this.
Teams like Brighton and Brentford getting above their station are dismantled, piece by piece. Newcastle feels different.
Afterwards, Howe, carrying the mantle for English coaches everywhere, described it as a “stepping stone”. Their world-leading striker, Alexander Isak, said it was “really just the start”.
Joelinton, the midfielder who was the beating heart of the final, added to the sentiment: “It’s the start of a new era for this club.” Bruno Guimaraes, his central midfield partner, talked of the fans one day singing his name like they sing club legend Alan Shearer’s.
This is not to blame them, either – they are merely parts of an accepted system. If it was not them, it would only be someone else.
But key players and the manager all sound invested in the project and if they can keep most of them together Newcastle will start perplexing rivals.
Winning silverware will only add to the Kingdom’s appetite for more. Those pictures and videos, of a senior Saudi official being revered on the turf at the national stadium, is a priceless return on investment.
Al-Rumayyan shouting “the first but not the last!” to the crowd was an indication of where this is going.
You can see why. It’s probably more favourable to wake up to stories of your work ending decades of heartbreak for supporters, than to claims about sportswashing.
On Sunday, there was a narrative of plucky underdog overcoming adversity, but, in truth, if you pay for the seventh most expensive squad in the country, and many of the teams that spent more care little about the early rounds of the tournament, it greatly enhances the odds in your favour.
They have recruited brilliantly, of course; something City are sometimes not given enough credit for while everyone focuses on the money thrown around.
Combine a few more windows of that, a brilliant bunch of players and a coach genuinely able to improve players like only the rarest of managers are capable of, they will be genuine Premier League title contenders soon.
A Carabao Cup trophy will be nothing by comparison: those title celebration pictures and social media video clips will be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world.