Engulfed: How Saudi Arabia Bought Sport, and the World

"In the judge’s meeting, this was seen almost as a companion book to States of Play . They are both about sportswashing, but James Montague’s book is more focused on Saudi Arabia. So it’s a more localised view. And you get an awful lot of the fan voice, if you like. If States of Play is very big and grand, an overview, this goes into the nitty gritty. He goes into a pub in Newcastle and speaks to fans, who say—over quite a number of pages—why should we be the ones to have to worry about sportswashing? We’ve been waiting a long time for money to be invested into the club, so why do we have to stand up and say it isn’t right, and that we don’t want this money? Why should we be expected to be held to a higher level of political correctness? What you do tend to get in this book are lone voices who are sort of screaming into the wind, saying they don’t want Saudi money in an English football club, because nobody is really listening. You get a feel for how the Saudi decision to go into sport affects people on the ground. Weirdly, you could actually combine both these books on sports washing and get one big book that doesn’t contradict or repeat itself, because one is the macro view and one is the micro view."