Journalist Luke Edwards has claimed that it’s no surprise that Newcastle United have opted to spend this winter undergoing a warm weather training camp in Saudi Arabia.
Midway through this season, Premier League football will be halted for while the 2022 FIFA World Cup takes place in Qatar. While some players will be taking part in the tournament, other squad members as well as the coaching staff will have to keep working behind the scenes at their respective clubs.
In this period, it has been confirmed that the Magpies will send their remaining players to the capital city Riyadh, and will play a friendly against Saudi Pro League champions Al-Hilal in December.
In reaction to this latest development at Newcastle, Edwards took to Twitter to say: “Point being they are going to go to Saudi Arabia, its not a shock. They are owned by Saudi government. It’s not going to change anything tweeting about it or change anyone’s mind tweeting about it. For some #nufc story will always be bad/tarnished now. Let them get on with it.”
TIF thoughts on Newcastle United
Newcastle previously travelled to Saudi Arabia in January 2022 and considering the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) has an 80% stake of the club’s owning consortium, it does feel as if this sort of thing could become a regular occurrence at the club.
That relation between the club and their financial backers never seems far from stirring controversy – with Eddie Howe’s recent argument with Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp over the matter leading to heavy criticism in the press – and so the club may face some negative reaction to these winter plans too.
However, as Edwards says, it certainly isn’t a shock to learn of this development. In a prior tweet, he actually claimed ‘it would be more of a story if #nufc didn’t go to Saudi Arabia this winter’. So it’s safe to say the footballing world will just have to get used to this very public relationship between the two, regardless of the very obvious concerns, as it’s not going anywhere out of view any time soon.