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Abu Dhabi, UAE
AE Daily News
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It’s a partnership that’s been hailed as “history in the making.”
One of the world’s most well-known soccer stars landed within the Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday, the place Cristiano Ronaldo was obtained in an extravagant ceremony, with excited kids sporting his new membership’s yellow and blue jerseys.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia’s success in luring the five-time Ballon d’Or winner on a two-year contract with the dominion’s Al Nassr FC is the Gulf monarchy’s newest step in realizing its sporting ambitions – seemingly at any price.
According to Saudi state-owned media, Ronaldo will earn an estimated $200 million a 12 months with Al Nassr, making him the world’s highest-paid soccer participant.
Shortly after the 37-year-old’s signing with Al Nassr, the membership’s Instagram web page gained over 5.3 million new followers. Its official web site was inaccessible after exceeding its bandwidth restrict as a result of sudden surge in visitors, and the hashtag #HalaRonaldo – Hello, Ronaldo in Arabic – was trending for days throughout the Middle East on Twitter.
Analysts say that his recruitment in Saudi Arabia is a part of a wider effort by the dominion to diversify its sources of income and grow to be a severe participant within the worldwide sporting scene.
It can also be seen as a transfer by the dominion to shore up its picture after it was tarnished by the 2018 dismemberment and killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by the hands of Saudi brokers, and a devastating struggle it began in Yemen in 2015.
Critics have decried the dominion for “sportswashing,” an try to burnish one’s repute by sport.
“I think Saudi Arabia has recognized a couple of years ago that to be a powerful nation internationally, you cannot just rely on hard power,” Danyel Reiche, a visiting analysis fellow and affiliate professor at Georgetown University Qatar, advised AE Daily News.
“You also need to invest in soft power, and the case of Qatar shows that this can work pretty well,” he mentioned, including that Saudi Arabia is following within the Qatari strategy with sport, however with a delay of round 25 years.
Neighboring Qatar has additionally confronted immense criticism because it gained the bid to internet hosting final 12 months’s FIFA World Cup in 2010.
Despite the smaller Gulf state going through related accusations of “sportswashing,” the match has largely been considered as successful, not least in exposing the world to a unique view of the Middle East, thanks partially to Morocco’s success in reaching the semifinals and Saudi Arabia beating eventual World Cup champion Argentina of their opening group sport.
Gulf nations interact in fierce competitors to grow to be the area’s premier leisure and sporting hubs. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, in shut proximity to one another, every have their very own Formula One racing occasion. But their competitors hasn’t been confined to the area. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have additionally purchased trophy European soccer groups.
Riyadh is taking part in catchup with neighbors who’ve lengthy realized the significance of investing in sports activities, mentioned Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical financial system at SKEMA Business School in Lille, France, particularly as its foremost supply of revenue – oil – is being progressively shunned.
“This is part of an ongoing attempt to create more resilient economies that are more broadly based upon industries other than those that are derived from oil and gas,” Chadwick advised AE Daily News.
Ronaldo’s new membership Al Nassr is backed by Qiddiya Investment Company (QIC), a subsidiary of the dominion’s wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which has performed a pivotal position in Saudi Arabia’s diversification plans.
“It is also a sign of interconnectedness, of globalization and of opening up to the rest of the world,” mentioned Georgetown University’s Reiche.
The transfer is a part of “several recent high profile moves in the sports world, including hosting the Andy Ruiz Jr. and Anthony Joshua world heavywight boxing championship bout in 2019, and launching the LIV Golf championship,” mentioned Omar Al-Ubaydli, director of analysis on the Bahrain-based Derasat assume tank. “It is a significant piece of a large puzzle that represents their economic restructuring.”
The kingdom has been on a path to not solely diversify its financial system, but in addition shift its picture amid a barrage of criticism over its human rights file and remedy of girls. Saudi Arabia is at present internet hosting all the things from desert raves to teaming up with famend soccer gamers. Argentina’s Lionel Messi final 12 months signed a profitable promotional cope with the dominion.
Hailed because the world’s biggest participant, 35-year-old Messi ended this 12 months’s World Cup match in Qatar together with his staff’s win over France, making his ambassadorship of even higher worth to the dominion.
The acquisition of such key world figures may also assist fight the monarchy’s decades-long repute of being “secretive” and “ultra-conservative,” James Dorsey, a senior fellow on the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and an knowledgeable on soccer within the Middle East, advised AE Daily News’s Eleni Giokos on Wednesday.
Al-Ubaydli mentioned that the dominion desires to make use of excessive profile worldwide sports activities “as a vehicle for advertising to the world its openness.”
Saudi Arabia purchased the English Premier league membership Newcastle United in 2021 by a three-party consortium, with PIF being the biggest stakeholder. The transfer proved controversial, as Amnesty International and different human rights defenders frightened it might overshadow the dominion’s human rights violations.
Ronaldo’s work with Saudi Arabia is already being criticized by rights teams who’re urging the soccer participant to “draw attention to human rights issues” in Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia has an image problem,” particularly since Khashoggi’s killing, says Reiche. But the dominion’s latest investments in sports activities and leisure are “not about sportswashing but about developing the country, social change and opening up to the world.”
Saudi Arabia is reportedly weighing a 2030 World Cup bid with Egypt and Greece, however the kingdom’s tourism ministry famous in November that it has not but submitted an official bid. Chadwick believes that Ronaldo’s cope with Al Nassr, nonetheless, might assist enhance the dominion’s bid ought to it select it pursue it.
Another means Saudi Arabia might profit from Ronaldo’s acquisition is that will probably be capable of enhance business efficiency, says Chadwick, particularly if this collaboration attracts additional worldwide expertise.
“It is important to see Ronaldo not just as a geopolitical instrument,” mentioned Chadwick, “There is still a commercial component to him and to the purpose he is expected to serve in Saudi Arabia.”
What Ronaldo’s transfer to Saudi Arabia exhibits is that the dominion aspires “to be seen as being the best” and that it desires to be perceived as a “contender and a legitimate member of the international football community,” mentioned Chadwick.
UAE FM meets Syria’s Assad in Damascus in additional signal of thawing ties
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad obtained the United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed in Damascus on Wednesday within the newest signal of thawing relations between Assad and the Gulf state. The assembly addressed developments in Syria and the broader Middle East, in keeping with UAE state news company WAM.
- Background: It was Abdullah bin Zayed’s first go to since a November 2021 assembly with Assad that led to the resumption of relations. Months later, in March 2022, Assad visited the UAE, his first go to to an Arab state because the begin of Syria’s civil struggle.
- Why it issues: Quite a few Assad’s former foes have been making an attempt to fix fences together with his regime. Last week, talks between the Syrian and Turkish protection ministers have been held in Moscow within the highest-level encounter reported between the estranged sides because the struggle in Syria started. The regional rapprochement is but to enhance the lives of common Syrians. Syria continues to be underneath Western sanctions.
Turkish President Erdogan says he may meet with Assad
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mentioned in a speech on Thursday that he may meet the Syrian chief “to establish peace.”
- Background: Erdogan’s feedback got here after the Moscow talks between the 2 nations’ protection ministers and intelligence chiefs. “Following this meeting… we will bring our foreign ministers together. And after that, as leaders, we will come together,” Erdogan mentioned on Thursday.
- Why it issues: The assembly would mark a dramatic shift in Turkey’s decade-long stance on Syria, the place Ankara was the prime supporter of political and armed factions preventing to topple Assad. The Turkish army maintains a presence throughout the Syrian border and inside northern Syria, the place it backs Syrian opposition forces. Erdogan has additionally pledged to launch yet one more incursion into northern Syria, aiming at making a 30-km (20-mile) deep “safe zone” that might be emptied of Kurdish fighters.
Iran shuts down French cultural middle over Charlie Hebdo’s Khamenei cartoons
Iran introduced on Thursday it had ended the actions of a Tehran-based French analysis institute, in response to cartoons mocking Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and fellow Shia Muslim clerics printed by French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo this week.
- Background: Iran summoned the French ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday to protest cartoons printed by satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. More than 30 cartoons poking enjoyable at Iran’s supreme chief have been printed by the journal on Wednesday, in a present of assist for the Iranian individuals who have been protesting the Islamic Republic’s authorities and its insurance policies.
- Why it issues: French-Iranian relations have deteriorated considerably since protests broke out in Iran late final 12 months. Paris has publicly supported the protests and spoken out in opposition to Iran’s response to them. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna criticized Iran’s freedom of press and judicial independence on Thursday, saying “press freedom exists, contrary to what is going on in Iran and… it is exercised under the supervision of a judge in an independent judiciary – and there too it’s something that Iran knows little of.”
The prized legacy of iconic Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum re-emerged this 12 months when Rolling Stone journal featured her in its “200 Greatest Singers of All Time.”
Ranking 61st, Umm Kulthum was the one Arab artist to make it to the listing, with the journal saying that she “has no real equivalent among singers in the West.”
Born in a small village northeast of the Egyptian capital Cairo, Umm Kulthum rose to unmatched fame as she got here to signify “the soul of the pan-Arab world,” the music journal mentioned.
“Her potent contralto, which could blur gender in its lower register, conveyed breathtaking emotional range in complex songs that, across theme and wildly-ornamented variations, could easily last an hour, as she worked crowds like a fiery preacher,” it wrote.
Nicknamed “the lady of Arab singing,” her music featured each classical Arabic poetry in addition to colloquial songs nonetheless adored by youthful generations. Her most well-known items embrace “Inta Uumri” (you’re my life), “Alf Leila Weileila” (a thousand and one nights), “Amal Hayati” (hope of my life) and “Daret al-Ayyam” (the times have come round). Some of her songs have been remixed to trendy beats which have made their strategy to Middle Eastern nightclubs.
The singer stays an unmatched voice throughout the Arab World and her music can nonetheless be heard in lots of conventional espresso retailers in Old Cairo’s neighborhoods and different elements of the Arab world.
Umm Kulthum’s dying in 1975 introduced hundreds of thousands of mourners to the streets of Cairo.
By Nadeen Ebrahim
