"Sportswashing" in Football - 2022

Shrewsbury Town vs Qatar SC, scheduled for today, has been cancelled, after fan protests.

It has now been turned into an "open" training session for all the fans who are in Spain at the moment.

I'm probably going to be alone on this but I have much more of an issue with the new Burnley owners.

Yes Saudi Arabia is a horrible country with horrible leaders, but they aren't going to destroy a local club. They have to spend their money somehow and investing money in a team and the local area like at man City seems like a good use of the money.

Burnley on the other hand are going to fall down the league as their owner asset strips them after a leveraged takeover.

Football was rotten to the core long before the likes of the Qataris or Saudis appeared.

Just new players on the scene.

Fans won't care too much about where the money comes from, if it allows them to compete and brings them good times.

The biggest lie in football has been "for the fans".

Fans are an after thought, and have been for years.

I've been wondering over the last few days how the average fans of Newcatle & Man City two cub with huge major foodbanks collections outside their staduims on match days will view there owners this winter.

Now with their owners backing Russia and the other OPEC Countries in slowing down oil production which will mean for many of the struggling fans who this winter will more than likely struggle even more to heat their homes and fill their cars with petrol as prices rise and line the pockets of their owners will that even effect their thoughts on the ownership of their clubs.

Or will they just blame the Tories and keep cheering their Middle East owners because they buy them new players.

or will the average fan watch the WC this winter - dont think I have been so under-whelmed for a WC ever - was it 8 years ago FIFA delivered the WC to Russia and Qatar , corruption and greed is not just at City and Newcastle its widespread , except at the grass roots local level. Gary Neville is still virtue signalling about football, and yet is going to be a pundit from Qatar this winter. Total hypocracy.

And don't forget Mr Nice Guy David Beckham, already worth a reported 400 million, feels he needs another few million so badly that he will promote the Qataris too.

Football has stunk for the last decade or more. Its all about money now. And for that reason, the ESL will happen some day. Fact.

When Infantino took over as President, there should have been a complete sweep out of all the National Associations Fifa delegates and new ones appointed.

They should have also rid the organisation of its major sponsors like Adidas, Coca-Cola etc as they had to have been complicit in the fraudulent goings-on in the sport.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/08/blatter-to-beckham-who-was-in-the-room-when-qatar-got-the-world-cup

?

The post you quoted doesn't say anything even remotely like that...

It says their owners (Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi) are major contributors to it, which is pretty undeniable ...

Is it not a topic that can be discussed ie the complete ease people can overlook morally abhorrent behaviours because the team they support might win some trophies.

Absolutely come into a discussion change people's comments accuses them of things they never said do the upmost to shut down an open discussion and use as much whataboutery as they possibly can to kill those discussions.

That is the trend and proof sportswashing for genocidal murderous regimes works.

I wouldn't necessarily expect someone to turn their back on their club - I would've expected to see more discourse about it from fans though, and more of a grudging acceptance rather than the predominantly total embrace of it. I'd have expected something more similar to the reaction of Utd fans towards the Glazers, or Liverpool fans towards Hicks and Gillette back in the day - still supporting your team, but you make your displeasure at the ownership known. Protests, marches, online campaigns etc.

The total lack of any meaningful critical reaction from fans of these clubs has been really surprising to me - especially with Newcastle and the Saudi's. It really goes to show that as long as you simply throw in the money, the obvious broader concerns of having an owner who is guilty of genocide, state sponsored murder, who had 81 people put to death earlier this year, who routinely orders the death penalty for child offenders (not to mention having state policies that are outright misogynist and homophobic)... all these things just don't even seem to raise a peep out of the fanbase.

So where I wouldn't have expected someone to turn their back on their club, I would've at least expected some more meaningfully expressed discomfort at their new owner. The most depressing aspect is that we all know if they were to tighten the purse strings, the protests wouldn't be long coming (which we know they're well capable of organising after Mike Ashley - and of course UEFA and the PL bodies totally accepted him as an owner too, so by your rationale so too should the fans supposedly?).