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After Newcastle takeover – What Schalke has in common with the Blood Sheikh – international football

There is little I could say against you if you said that English football has lost all moral decency.

The sale of Newcastle United to the murderous regime in Saudi Arabia is a new low, even for the money-obsessed Premier League.

That is “sportswashing” in its extreme form!

I can see an uncomfortable parallel between Newcastle and Schalke. Both are mining regions with coal dust under the fingernails. Both feed on past fame.

But that was a long time ago. 16 out of 20 top clubs in England get their money from foreign paymasters. Even fourth division Bristol Rovers has a Jordanian owner.

Isn’t that just the case these days?

Chelsea get rubles from Siberia. Man City is funded by Abu Dhabi. Paris is a playground for Qatar – which will also be bought by the next World Cup.

How do I come to compare Schalke with Newcastle?

Well, who initiated the deal between Putin’s Gazprom and the miners’ club in Gelsenkirchen? Nobody less than the former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was responsible for this 15 years ago. The pipeline is still up and running and the money continues to flow. Despite Schalke’s failures, the name of the Russian natural gas company is still on the jerseys.

Poisoning former Soviet spies abroad or brutally murdering the critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi are incredible crimes. The times when sport and politics could still be separated are long gone.

What is new about the deal with Newcastle is that it was initiated by a woman: Amanda Staveley is the face of the takeover.

She made her fortune by brokering financial transactions between Arabia and the West and worked for four years to buy the club for around 350 million euros from an Englishman who makes his living with sports equipment.

Mrs. Staveley and her Arab friends promise to spend at least as much as Manchester, Liverpool and Paris. Money from the state, which some regard as blood money.

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