Insight into the Saudi Psyche

Riyadh. Taxi outside, engine running

[To the young soccer players I met this morning at Memorial Park (wonder why you weren’t at school) it’s true! Christiano RonaldoI is paid $4.3 million per week to turn out for Al Nassr. That’s an almost a quarter of a billion a year And it’s got to be true – it’s on the internet! But after reading this blog post you will have to decide whether it’s worth it if you have to deal with the Saudis. I write this in the sure and certain knowledge that solely as a result of my Rushdie-like candor some blood-crazed Saudi cleric will lay a fatwah on me! Here’s the disclaimer. I have met just one Saudi Arabian in my lifetime, period. And I presume some Saudi Arabians to be quite upstanding. But tell me honestly what would you expect from a land where money literally oozes from the ground (Norway has them beat, Skal!) where a captive foreign slaveforce toils in 120 F degrees and where women are solely concubines and drudges!  A 27-year-old Saudi Arabian man is reported to have been sentenced to 500 lashes and five years’ imprisonment for homosexuality by a court in Jeddah. I give you the birthplace home of Osama bin Laden!!

So last night I was at Belmont and Kimball trying to get back home after an innocent night’s entertainment and two beers in Chicago’s Avondale/Logan Square neighborhood . At the blue line stop I ran across a group of four young people, I would say in their twenties. Three olive skinned young men and a white girl. I’m trying to build up support for keepfootballbeautiful.com so I asked Do you like soccer? The youngest guy at the back said Yes, the guy at the front even plays. handing him my card I said Please read my blog. He said he would do so!

But having made a connection we went down the escalator to the platform together. And I engaged in conversation with this the oldest reveller, perhaps 30, let’s call him Omar. His English wasn’t perfect but it was quite good enough for two-way communication. Unbelievably they said they were from Oak Park too. Do we had the prospect of an hour’s together. Omar asked where will the World Cup be in 2026 but he already knew it was US/Canada/Mexico. He was just teasing! He asked where in 2030? I said Morocco, Portugal and Spain with the opening games in Uruguay/Argentina/Paraguay. FIFA, I applaud these choices. Soccer is on fire in Morocco. The countries of Uruguay and Paraguay are tiny in population but along with Argentina they are hugely football-crazy!

My English friend Bryan recently observed that the trend has moved toward multiple countries sharing each World Cup. Courtesy of WhatsApp I can bring you Bryan’s quipquote verbatim: ‘And the 2030 World Cup is in South America, Europe and North Africa, FIFA officials couldn’t decide on which is the safest bribe to take so they took them all! N.B. at some point in time they did consider the football fans and the cost of supporting the sport they follow. That point has yet to be recalled, remembered and recognised.’ Personally I hope Gianni Infantino just shriveled up like a slug you put salt on!!!

Getting back to Omar, he said In 2034 we take World Cup in Saudi, start small, grow big, we take over World Cup. And perhaps the world! Not on your Nelly I thought. (what a Bertie Wooster expression!). But the Arabs already showed what the petrodollar can buy at City, Arsenal and Newcastle. And read next week’s blog post The Road to Riyadh which charts the exodus of great players in their prime (as well as has-beens like Ronaldo) to Al Nassr, Al Etihad, Al Something or Other who Cares. Compared with storied European teams who can trace their heritage back to the middle of the nineteenth century these arab teams are flashes in the pan of history.  Soon to disappear down the toilet pan too!  My main points, as these despicable sell-out players disappear into obscurity, are as follows

1 It’s a tragedy for football

2 They leave civilization behind

3 No-one will ever watch them again

4 After no more than two years they will retire from the game on a huge pillow stuffed to bursting with petrodollars.

I asked Omar where do you even watch Saudi league football?  He said Mostly Twitter (didn’t even get the name right!)  So not Sky, not BBC, not CBS, not ESPN and certainly not NBC – not even satellite! No, but in a curtained bedroom in Sterling Heights or Jersey City; in the Edgware Road and Acton; in the 18th, 19th and 20th arondissement Omar’s brethren are peering at their X feeds to see the latest travesty of the game we have nurtured and loved since 2500 BC!  Go on – look that date up!

Omar said Saudi will win the World Cup 2034. I was getting a little fatigued by his persistent fascist megalomaniac rant. But I said Hopefully you’ll have some decent home-grown players by then! Can’t see it myself. Omar’s next question was What about the gays? I smelled a rat but wanting to hear grassroots Saudi opinion first hand. So I said I think it’s their own business. He said But they try to seduce our children. I said I don’t think so. Then I countered with Did you hear about the migrant stadium workers in Qatar? Omar came back with ‘The Bangla Deshi are smelling but they make big money.’ For your reference data from workers’ home countries suggests more than 6,500 migrants from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka died in Qatar between 2010 and 2020, a widely-circulated report from The Guardian last year found. Omar thinks they should sweat less and wash more often!

Unaccountably my new friends stayed on the blue line train when I got off at Clark and Lake to transfer to my beloved green line.

When I got back home to Oak Park, at only 10.30pm, my wife had locked me out. If she had only known how much I needed comfort and solace in this hateful world she might have spared me the wind and the rain!