It has been an extraordinary few months for Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which owns the vast majority of Newcastle United. Over the summer, the fund (commonly known as PIF) spent nearly $1 billion to acquire some of the world’s best players, from Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema at the start of the transfer window to Neymar at the end of it.
PIF signed Sadio Mané from Bayern Munich, Fabinho and Roberto Firmino from Liverpool, N’Golo Kanté and Édouard Mendy from Chelsea, Riyad Mahrez and Aymeric Laporte from Manchester City, Rúben Neves from Wolves, and the promising Gabri Veiga from Celta. Then it handed out extravagant contracts to nearly all of them: $40 million a year to Mané, $647 million over three years for Benzema and, for Neymar, the preposterous annual sum of $300 million, which isn’t much less than Newcastle cost PIF to purchase in October 2021.
It was just the kind of spending spree that critics warned would occur after the ownership group, which has strong links to the Saudi state, was allowed to consummate the deal for the Premier League side. With more than $800 billion dollars at its disposal, PIF isn’t just the wealthiest entity to own a Premier League club; it controls more wealth than all the rest of them combined.
“That’s why the Premier League are frightened stiff of what Newcastle United can do,” says Malcolm McDonald, who scored 95 goals for the Magpies from 1971 to 1976 and still lives in the city.
In September, Newcastle played AC Milan in its first Champions League game in two decades, a reward for its sudden emergence last season as England’s fourth-best club. But as the starting XI trotted out onto the San Siro turf, not a single one of those star signings was included. The reason? They don’t actually play for Newcastle. Mane, Benzema, Neymar, and all those other world-class players had signed with one or another of the four Saudi Pro League teams that PIF controls: Al Ittihad, Al Ahli and Al Hilal and Al Nassr, which had started the spending spree in January by enticing Cristiano Ronaldo to Saudi Arabia.
Instead, outfitted in Newcastle’s traditional black-and-white striped strip were … a bunch of plucky Englishmen. You didn’t have to squint hard to envision the contours of a team that previous owner Mike Ashley might have constructed during his 14-year stewardship of the club, if he hadn’t been quite so penurious. Some of them were even there when the Saudi group arrived.
“We haven’t gone out necessarily and bought the big names and paid extortionate money to players,” says Eddie Howe, Newcastle’s manager. “We’ve tried to keep the players that we feel deserve to be here, and a lot of those have long links with the club.”
Dan Burn, who started at left back, has been a Newcastle fan since childhood. So has midfielder Sean Longstaff, who joined the club’s academy at age 9. (In fact, there are eight lifelong Newcastle supporters in the first team.) The career of Jacob Murphy, the itinerant right winger, resembles a bus tour of the English football hinterlands: Swindon Town, Scunthorpe, Colchester, Blackpool, Sheffield Wednesday, Coventry, Norwich.
While it’s true Kieran Trippier and Nick Pope regularly feature for England, and Sandro Tonali (Italy) and Bruno Guimarães (Brazil) were coveted internationals, there wasn’t a Neymar among them. “The way they’ve done it is really clever,” says Longstaff. “They’ve still got a nucleus of lads from England — lads from the northeast — to make sure everyone coming in knows how important and special it is to play where we do.”
And rather than, say, Jose Mourinho or Carlo Ancelotti, world-class managers with Champions League pedigrees, Newcastle was led by Howe, whose previous career consisted of taking a bunch of scrappy Bournemouth players from League Two all the way to the Premier League. Not only had Howe never managed a Champions League game before; he hadn’t even attended one. “The manager here is building a team, rather than just buying up names that will fit the bill in the different positions,” explains striker Callum Wilson, who played for Howe at Bournemouth. “Players who understand the way we play.
“They’re buying into the culture. And I think you’re seeing it working.”
Trippier was a big one. So was Burn, who had emerged as a Premier League standout for Brighton when his boyhood club was purchased by the wealthiest owners in football. News of the sale brought a tinge of sadness. An area resident who had been released by Newcastle’s youth academy as a player of no promise at age 11, he had set his sights on getting back.
“When the new owners came in, I sat down with me dad and said, ‘There’s no way I’ll get any Newcastle interest now,'” he says. But Howe figured Burn could be convinced to return home, even if the club’s status remained uncertain. He also knew how much Burn would fortify his back four. When Brighton turned down an initial offer of 7 million pounds, PIF came back with a number nearly twice as high. It was only money, after all — and not even very much of it.
Burn brought to the club a towering presence — at 6-foot-7, he is one of the sport’s tallest defenders — and an appreciation of what supporters demand, since he had grown up one of them. “They want players who will go out and give absolutely 100 percent,” he says. “If you do that and don’t get a result, they can accept it. But you have to give that effort. Obviously, when the ownership took over, everyone was expecting these superstar signings, but the way the gaffer likes to play, and the sort of characters he likes in the building, I think it all kind of works together for a place like Newcastle.”
Howe himself wasn’t necessarily ownership’s first choice. If Unai Emery could have been coaxed into leaving Villarreal, the Newcastle United squad would have looked quite different. But Emery was intractable. Negotiations with Paulo Fonseca, who had been managing Roma and is now at Lille, came to nothing, and other inquiries stalled. Howe, whose name was linked with Newcastle even during Ashley’s tenure, was unemployed and available. And his remarkable success with Bournemouth gave the new ownership instant credibility.
At the time, Howe had managed more matches outside the Premier League than in it. With Bournemouth, he had taken players of limited ability and taught them — and motivated them — until they could compete at the next level, and then the next one, and the one beyond that.
His approach requires playing with intensity; artistry and imagination are optional. “Our identity is intensity,” he says — and he says it so often, it has become the club’s unofficial slogan, painted on walls at the training ground. That suits a working-class city. “There’s a certain requisite of player, not only in his physical attributes and skill but also in character, who will play that way,” says Eales. “And then I think there’s an amplification effect to that because that passion, that commitment, that intensity resonate so well with our supporters.”
Keenly aware that the rest of football already feels threatened by its financial might, PIF seems to be taking pains to strictly obey what has previously proven to be an almost entirely toothless law. Unlike Manchester City, which has been charged with violating financial fair play laws nearly 100 times over nine years, Newcastle has spent slowly and relatively modestly. Real Sociedad‘s Alexander Isak cost $70 million in 2022, which broke the club record, but the expected nine-digit acquisitions haven’t happened.
Instead, Newcastle’s future plans are built around growing sponsorship revenue. (Currently, only one of its five biggest sponsors is based in Saudi Arabia. That may change before long.) Revenue matters because FFP only limits how much money you can lose in a given period, not how much you can spend. “Ultimately, the more revenue you have, the more wage bill you have,” Eales says. “And as much as you dress it up, there’s a direct correlation between wage bill and finishing position.”
For now, Howe is right where he wants to be, with a blend of striving overachievers and elite internationals of an ideal temperament. His biggest challenge is keeping them all happy. “You see players coming in for 50, 60, 70 million pounds that want to play every week,” says Wilson. “And so do those of us that were already here. That’s what the manager has to contend with, and I feel like he’s dealing with that the right way.” He smiles. “Sometimes at the expense of myself.”
Newcastle started slowly this season, losing three early Premier League games before a crucial — if aesthetically unsatisfying — win at home against Brentford. That came the Saturday before the trip to San Siro, and it didn’t completely quell the sense of unease. “We have to return to our highest level of performance,” Howe said before the trip. “I’m very calm in one sense, but also anxious to succeed in another.”
That’s why the effort at San Siro meant so much. Milan took the game’s first 14 shots. Among them was a backheel by Rafael Leão, who had slipped between three defenders. Leão muffed that chance, Pope snuffed several others, and Newcastle gained confidence. Outshot 25-6 in the end, they almost stole a win deep into extra time with their only shot on target all evening, a Longstaff missile that was fingertipped over the bar. They left Italy with a crucial point and an intimation that their luck was set to turn, returned to England and then battered Sheffield United 8-0. Then they outclassed Burnley and drew with West Ham. That has left them in eighth place, only four points out of fourth.
