A three-hour drive south-west, the Conservative party conference was drawing to a close. Much of the talk in Manchester centred on the supposed demise of the Northern Powerhouse project but little did the delegates realise that, 150 miles up the road, the concept is alive and kicking.
If, in a political context at least, levelling up seems an increasingly empty slogan, the events of Wednesday night in the north-east confirmed Newcastle United’s emergence as a rising force to be reckoned with.
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In restricting Paris Saint-Germain to two shots on target in the course of a 4-1 Champions League group stage deconstruction of Luis Enrique’s star-studded side, Eddie Howe’s players succeeded in placing Newcastle not merely in the metaphorical centre of the English footballing map but Europe’s too.
After Miguel Almirón, Dan Burn, Sean Longstaff and Fabian Schär had scored the goals and the defence had subdued Kylian Mbappé, supposedly the world’s best attacking player, almost anything seemed possible for Howe.
As Burn, Newcastle’s left-back, said he was “waiting for someone to wake me up from this surreal dream” no one would have been totally surprised were his manager to have walked on the waters of the River Tyne.
If only Rishi Sunak could transpose even a little of the spirit of Burn, Longstaff and co into his struggling cabinet, the sub-standard railways bisecting the top half of the country would surely be electrified in record time.
Yet the awkward truth is that, while Wednesday night represented a glorious victory for localism – the outstanding Burn and Longstaff are Tynesiders and Howe is a homegrown English manager capable of outsmarting the continent’s elite – it was also a very big win for Saudi Arabia.
Almost exactly two years since the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund purchased majority control of Newcastle, Saudi Arabia not only secured bragging rights over their Qatari neighbours, the big-spending owners of PSG, but emphasised its ability to shape football’s future.
Earlier on Wednesday Fifa had announced that the 2034 World Cup would be staged in Asia or Oceania, in effect placing the kingdom in pole position to host that tournament.
It served as tacit confirmation that, almost exactly five years after Mohammed bin Salman’s alleged role in the grisly murder of the Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi led to the Gulf country’s de facto leader being ostracised by world leaders, an awful lot has changed. These days Bin Salman, a major UK ally, is simply too powerful, and too influential, to be ignored.
As Newcastle was flooded by visiting French fans, small businesses gave thanks for a Champions League group stage draw also featuring Milan and Borussia Dortmund which is expected to bring around 8,000 “sports tourists” to Tyneside, boosting the city’s economy by at least £4m. If Howe’s team progress to the knockout rounds that sum will swiftly escalate.
That would not be possible had PIF not invested £400m in restocking the squad. It explains why, while Newcastle City Council has cut ties with its former Chinese twin city, Taiyuan, in protest at China’s human rights violations, it has remained largely silent about Saudi Arabian transgressions.
Yet no one can argue that the owners have done anything less than a brilliant job in reconstructing Newcastle as a club after years of neglect under Mike Ashley.
Where PSG’s hierarchy have often appeared to simply chuck cash at what now appears the ultimate trophy club, their St James’ Park counterparts have recruited sensibly and, relatively, slowly.
Admittedly, Newcastle’s hands have been tied by financial fair play restrictions but the rebuild has allowed Howe to use his considerable coaching talents to reinvent once routinely written-off talents including Longstaff and Burn. These days rivals patronise that pair at their peril.
Tellingly Wednesday night involved Luis Enrique’s £300m front four being repeatedly thwarted by Howe’s £30m defence. As Warren Zaïre-Emery, PSG’s best player, acknowledged: “Newcastle shut us down.”
The visitors seemed taken aback by the wall of noise generated by home fans determined to enjoy their first Champions League home game for 20 years, and Luis Enrique’s high-stakes gamble in fielding four forwards in an essentially 4-2-4 formation rebounded spectacularly.
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Although this configuration left Mbappé and friends one on one against a defence lacking a little pace and without the injured Sven Botman, that rearguard held firm. Moreover a backline superbly marshalled by Botman’s rarely used understudy, the club captain Jamaal Lascelles, held its nerve and refused to retreat and drop deep to protect Newcastle’s lead.
With PSG outnumbered in a midfield controlled by Brazil’s Bruno Guimarães, Italy’s Sandro Tonali and Longstaff, Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé and co were not merely starved of service but watched in horror as hard-pressing Newcastle scored four times. “We wanted to show them how good we are,” said Longstaff. “And I think we did that.”
Looking on from the executive box after flying in from Riyadh, Yasir al-Rumayyan, Newcastle’s chairman and the governor of PIF, must have felt that his publicly stated ambition to eventually preside over the “No 1 club” was considerably closer to becoming reality than even he envisaged.
For the moment at least Rumayyan and his fellow directors are using plenty of local materials to help build not merely a northern powerhouse but potentially a European and possibly ultimately an international one.
In many ways the dynamic shared by, among others, Guimarães and Longstaff represents the sort of satisfying, transformative synergy between localism and globalism craved by politicians of virtually all stripes.
The only trouble is they tend to be rather better at talking about it than pulling it off.
