by Pep Guardiola and his Manchester City squad left for Jeddah just an hour after dropping another two points in a treacherous Premier League season marred by the small matter of becoming world champions for the first time in the history of the club.
On the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, the club that has flown the Abu Dhabi flag in Britain for 15 years will compete for the only major trophy missing since the Guardiola era. If English football has always regarded the Club World Cup – or the Intercontinental Cup as it was known in previous guises – as an afterthought, that is anything but in the Gulf this week.
Saudi Arabia’s ruling class, led by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin-Salman, has put sport at the center of its global campaign to change perceptions of this secretive, authoritarian, oil-rich state. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, that process began in part with the acquisition of City in 2008, and then the resulting City Football Group, which is now a network of 12 clubs worldwide.
Guardiola’s City have been crushed by a run of just seven points from their last six league games, and the shadow of 115 Premier League charges looms large, but the coming days are not about the politics of domestic or even European football. It means their own part in the struggles between the super-rich monarchies that run billions of fossil fuel in the Gulf. Struggles for power, wealth and influence take place in diplomacy, business, football and, sometimes, even war.
The royal courts of Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are at odds over their positions in Middle Eastern politics. They supported various rebel factions in the war currently being fought between two rival powers just over the Red Sea in Sudan, in eastern Africa. Both countries are seeking to diversify their oil-based economies in commercially sound and reputational ways.
Among them is football. Owned by UAE vice president Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, City are European champions and may soon be world champions. City are Abu Dhabi’s sporting flagship and Mansour also backed the Barclay family’s £1 billion bid to regain control of the Telegraph. Saudi Arabia has its Saudi Pro League, which has an investment of more than £1 billion, and Newcastle United, which is owned by the Public Investment Fund.
If City get past Asian champions Urawa Red Diamonds on Tuesday, and then play in the final on Friday, they will leave Jeddah straight away with a new show going into Saudi Arabia. Saturday night, Antony Joshua’s top boxing card in Riyadh that includes his opponent, the Swede Otto Wallin, and also Deontay Wilder. The Soundstorm music festival took place in Riyadh this week, featuring, among others, Calvin Harris, Metallica, 50 Cent and Will Smith. LIV Golf was in Jeddah in October.
Boxing and golf also played a central role in Saudi Arabia trying to put a modern face on the world, while trying to moderate the conservative elements that are a significant part of the power base. At the same time Saudi Arabia and the UAE face difficult questions on human rights records and seek to maintain a firm domestic grip on power while changing the global profile. There is a rare chance meeting of the two this week, although it is not as good as Saudi Arabia had hoped at the start of the Club World Cup.
Saudi champions Al-Ittihad, with Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante and Fabinho, lost another match against Egypt’s Al Ahly at the King Abdullah stadium on Friday night. It means African champions Al Ahly will play Brazil’s Copa Libertadores winners Fluminense in the first semi-final on Tuesday night.
This is Saudi Arabia’s first FIFA Club World Cup. Abu Dhabi has hosted three of the previous six. Fifa president Gianni Infantino is now a staunch ally of Saudi Arabia and has backed the kingdom to host the 2034 World Cup finals. Due to FIFA’s lack of a hand in the 2030 tournament award, Saudi Arabia will bid for 2034 without opposition next year. Infantino held a Fifa Council meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Jeddah on Sunday to, among other things, finalize qualification for the expanded FIFA Club World Cup 2025.
Professor Simon Chadwick of the Skema Business School in Paris, and an expert on the region and its sporting ambitions, says the prospect of Abu Dhabi’s flagship club becoming world champions in Arabia. “Saudi Arabia had lost its way in the last 20 years and was wasting its wealth,” he says. “The government has put in too much and local competitors have gone overboard. Abu Dhabi is significant because many senior people there think that Abu Dhabi is the leader of the region.”
Chadwick points out that the push for global credibility is at the forefront of Gulf politics. City’s main sponsor, Etihad Airways, is the only Gulf airline still flying to Israel. In the light of the war in Gaza that followed the terrorist attacks on October 7, Saudi Arabia managed to normalize ties with Israel. Abu Dhabi had already done that. Saudi Arabia has cut funding for its proxy war in Yemen, says Chadwick, in order to spend money on projects that change international attitudes, including sport, and football in particular.
“Saudi is trying to fight back and define a new place for itself in the world,” he says. “He’s really still trying to work things out. Abu Dhabi gets a bit of international backlash over sports washing. Saudi Arabia gets a lot more backlash for sports washing.” Chadwick says that while Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi were aligned in the blockade of Qatar between 2017 and 2021, and the diplomatic crisis that grew out of it, the situation has changed again.
“Saudi is excited,” he says, “and the two countries are against each other. Some believe that Abu Dhabi is the most disruptive influence in Africa at the moment. There are fundamental differences between Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.”
At the Qatar World Cup finals this time last year, Bin-Salman was a prominent presence in the VIP areas of the stadium, often alongside Infantino. However, it was the Qataris’ show and they earned the diplomatic benefit of global scrutiny. The nation had a hand in the mediation between Israel and Hamas in recent months.
This week it will be the show of Arabia, albeit on a much smaller scale. However, it comes with the assurance that they will get the big one under Infantino’s Fifa – the Fifa World Cup finals – in 2034. On Friday night in Jeddah, the Fifa team and their Saudi hosts will most likely give the cup in hand please. it is the City of Guardiola, famous for its own Gulf owners.
