News - Middle East: The Portuguese player has received a hero’s welcome, but human rights groups cry foul over ‘sportswashing’

As Cristiano Ronaldo jogged out to the pitch for his Saudi Arabian debut last week, gilded confetti popped and swirled down on the stands. The crowd in the Riyadh stadium roared. 

Seconds later, when Lionel Messi emerged to face his longtime rival, they erupted. Before the players’ entrance, Turki al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s entertainment emperor, had instructed spectators: “I want you to set this stadium on fire!”

Al-Sheikh has polarised public opinion in the formerly ultra-conservative nation, but many young Saudis credit him for leading a drive to host concerts and sporting tournaments in the kingdom. “There are 140 countries watching you. You are in a historic moment now”, he bellowed at the ecstatic crowd.

Messi’s team, Paris Saint-Germain, was facing an all-star Saudi side featuring Ronaldo, whose $200mn-a-year signing for Al Nassr has delighted a nation of football fanatics whose clubs have never previously been able to attract the likes of the Portuguese striker. Messi is also being courted by the Saudis.

If the idea behind buying Ronaldo was to bolster the kingdom’s image abroad, the authorities are giving it their best shot. Foreign journalists were driven to the stadium in luxury buses and ushered around by polite young men who invited them to roam the stands.

Mohammed Bin Salman has faced intense criticism abroad for human rights abuses, including a recent spate of executions and harsh sentences. One 34-year-old female PhD student was sentenced to decades in jail for a series of critical tweets. 

This has complicated Saudi Arabia’s push into sports, led by the sovereign Public Investment Fund, which bought the UK’s Newcastle United FC in 2021 and set up a rival to the US’s PGA golf tour.

 Critics dismiss this as an intentional distraction from continuing human rights abuses. “Al-Nassr’s signing of Cristiano Ronaldo fits into a wider pattern of sportswashing in Saudi Arabia,” Amnesty International said in a statement ahead of the match.