Newcastle’s moment of triumph felt so wholesome. But we still need to talk about why it wasn’t perfect

There was something familiar about the roar that filled Wembley Stadium at 6.30pm on Sunday. It wasn’t just ear-splittingly loud. It was visceral, fuelled not just by joy or euphoria but by all the frustration and longing that had built up for decades inside every Newcastle United fan.

It sounded a lot like the roar that erupted at the same end of the stadium on May 14, 2011, when Manchester City beat Stoke City 1-0 in the FA Cup final to end their 35-year wait for a major trophy — and another roar four weeks before that, when they beat Manchester United in the semi-final. It felt, even at that point, like the tide of history was finally starting to turn in their favour.

For intensity and sheer rapture, no celebration can match those that follow years and decades of disappointment.

Feast has followed famine for Manchester City, winners of 20 major trophies in the past 14 years. But in terms of raw, unbridled passion and fervour, nothing will surpass the scenes that greeted that FA Cup and the first Premier League title a year later, when two stoppage-time goals saw them crowned champions of England at the expense of their neighbours and fiercest rivals Manchester United in the most dramatic of circumstances.

Newcastle might, like Manchester City, go on to win bigger prizes, but the rapturous scenes that followed Sunday’s victory against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, their first major trophy in 55 years and first domestic trophy in 70 years, will take some beating.

These are two of English football’s greatest and worthiest fanbases, synonymous with unswerving loyalty in the face of mediocrity (and in the case of late-1990s Manchester City, dropping down to the third tier, worse). In an era that would otherwise be dominated by the same handful of rich, powerful clubs, disruption — different names challenging for and winning the prizes — has never been more difficult or more important.

It is why, in the joyous aftermath of Sunday, it has felt uncomfortable to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

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.

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”.

Similar feelings abound in the case of Manchester City, whose ownership by Sheikh Mansour, vice-president of the United Arab Emirates, has been described by Amnesty International as “one of football’s most brazen attempts to ‘sports wash’ a country’s deeply tarnished image through the glamour of the game”.

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.

In that anything-goes climate, football club ownership in England has become a lottery. Not many Newcastle fans felt inclined to fret about the small print on the back of a winning ticket. Some have felt conflicted, but after decades without success and 14 years of soulless drudgery under Mike Ashley’s parsimonious ownership, many were willing to accept anything for the promise or even just the hope of better times.

Few in the Newcastle end at Wembley were likely thinking about PIF, Saudi Arabia or the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi at full time on Sunday, that is for sure.

Here’s the thing. Neither was I. In the moment, Newcastle’s first trophy success since 1969 did not feel like a Public Investment Fund production, brought to you in association with Sela, Saudia and Noon. It felt so much more wholesome than that, seeing Eddie Howe and an admirable, relatable group of players celebrate with those wonderful supporters — a manager, team and fanbase in perfect harmony, a rhapsody in black and white.

And then their chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of PIF and a close ally of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, left his seat in Wembley’s Royal Box and went down to the pitch to join the celebrations, lifting the trophy in front of the club’s supporters. “That’s the first!” he shouted. “And it’s not going to be the last!”

Owners and chairmen on the pitch, lifting trophies? Maybe it’s just me, but it is generally sickbag territory. I would make exceptions for Tony Bloom at Brighton & Hove Albion, Steve Gibson at Middlesbrough, Peter Coates at Stoke City and a handful of others whose investment in their club — emotional as well as financial — comes from the heart. And no, this isn’t about nationality — had Newcastle won a major trophy under Ashley’s ownership (not that it was ever likely), no fan would have wanted to see the sports retail tycoon in the thick of the celebrations.

Al-Rumayyan’s cameo felt jarring. To that point, it had felt entirely like a Newcastle triumph, a reward for Howe, his players and of course those long-suffering supporters, a reminder of Bill Shankly’s famous quote about how “at a football club, there’s a holy trinity — the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it”.

Of course they do, especially now that ownership models and motivations vary so much. But this isn’t mid-2000s Chelsea or late-2000s Manchester City, both of whom spent at a rate that blew the rest of the Premier League era out of the water. In the era of profit and sustainability regulations (PSR), that hasn’t been an option for Newcastle.

Newcastle assistant manager Jason Tindall with Al-Rumayyan, holding the trophy (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Across seven transfer windows since being bought by PIF in October 2021, Newcastle have spent around £400million ($520m) in the transfer market, signing Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali, Bruno Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon, Kieran Trippier and others. That is a lot of money, but consider that five Premier League clubs (Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal) have spent more over the same period and West Ham United have spent only slightly less. Consider that Chelsea have spent more than £1billion and Manchester United almost £600m over the same period, only to find themselves in flux.

To put it another way, after Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in the summer of 2003, they made the five biggest signings in the Premier League (Hernan Crespo, Damien Duff, Adrian Mutu, Juan Sebastian Veron and Claude Makelele, according to Transfermarkt), followed by four of the six biggest in year two (Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira, Arjen Robben), followed by the two biggest in year three (Michael Essien and Shaun Wright-Phillips).

After Manchester City were bought by Sheikh Mansour on the final day of the summer transfer window in 2008, they made the Premier League’s biggest signing in year one (Robinho), all of the four biggest in year two (Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor, Joleon Lescott and Roque Santa Cruz) and the five biggest in year three (Yaya Toure, Mario Balotelli, David Silva, Aleksandar Kolarov and James Milner). Even with a lot more ground to make up than Chelsea, success began to feel inevitable.

By contrast, Newcastle under PIF made the sixth-, 15th-, 43rd- and 44th-biggest signings in the Premier League in 2021-22 (Bruno Guimaraes, Chris Wood, Dan Burn, Kieran Trippier), the sixth-, 17th-, 25th- and 61st-biggest signings of 2022-23 (Isak, Gordon, Sven Botman, Matt Targett), 12th-, 20th- and 28th-biggest signings of 2023-24 (Tonali, Harvey Barnes and Tino Livramento) and, other than turning Lewis Hall’s loan into a permanent deal, did not complete a significant deal last summer due to PSR constraints.

It is a level of investment that was inconceivable under Ashley, but it has hardly been off the scale. It hasn’t been what Arsene Wenger used to call “financial doping” in the cases of Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. Newcastle could not have signed Isak from Real Sociedad for £60m and Guimaraes from Lyon for around £40m without the PIF takeover and the subsequent commercial boost from PIF-related companies, but it is equally likely that the purse strings would have been loosened — and a surge in commercial income expected — under almost any post-Ashley ownership regime.

PIF’s masterstroke was its appointment of Howe. He wasn’t the glitzy hire that some expected, but he has built a team of substance and identity, not by waving the chequebook or constantly demanding reinforcements the way some coaches do, but by working with players on the training ground, improving them.

Who imagined when Howe took over from Steve Bruce, with Newcastle 19th in the Premier League, that he would not just lead them away from relegation but secure Champions League qualification in his first full season?

Who imagined that after three and a half years Fabian Schar, Sean Longstaff, Joelinton and Jacob Murphy would still be there, all of them making significant contributions to a squad that is sixth in the Premier League and has just brought silverware to Tyneside?

Eddie Howe lifts Newcastle’s first trophy in 55 years (Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images)

Who imagined that the face of their long-awaited trophy success would be Burn, a towering local lad who grew up as a season ticket holder at St James’ Park, suffered the pain of release from the club’s academy at the age of 11 and ended up joining Blyth Spartans and Darlington and reaching the Premier League with Fulham before retiring to Newcastle via Brighton at the age of 29 and then scoring the opening goal in a final against Liverpool three years later?

It was Burn to whom the eye was drawn when the familiar strains of Mark Knopfler’s Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero) blared out of Wembley’s speaker system on Sunday evening. What a story. Success, when it came, was everything every Newcastle supporter dreamed it would be, particularly the man in the No 33 shirt.

It called to mind a banner that famously hung at St James’ Park during the Ashley era, saying that Newcastle fans — contrary to a misguided stereotype — “don’t demand a team that wins. We demand a club that tries”.

To become a team that won, they first needed to become a club that tried — a serious, ambitious club rather than the ghost ship it became under Ashley’s ownership.

But to become a club that tried, did they really need to become the latest flagship for Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund? Could there not have been another way? For a club of Newcastle’s size and rich history, was it really a case of choosing between stagnation or sportswashing?

It is a choice no fanbase should ever have to make — and indeed a choice that was never going to be theirs to make in a sporting culture where proud, historic institutions are sold again and again to the highest bidder.

This is English football in 2025. Morality left the arena long ago. By continually ignoring questions about sportswashing, about debt, about who should or should not be allowed to own a football club, and to what end, the game has made it difficult — far harder than it should be — to have grown-up conversations about issues of enormous importance.

It sells the game short to disregard and talk down what Newcastle’s triumph means to their players, their manager and a fanbase who have waited so long to taste success. Sport is about moments like that, the shared joy after years and decades of misery.

But the even greater disservice would be to ignore what the game is becoming, a geopolitical football in more ways than one. It has become compromised and conflicted. The more we ignore that conflict, the more entangled it threatens to become.

(Top photo: Al-Rumayyan with Newcastle’s trophy; by Alex Dodd/CameraSport via Getty Images)