Newcastle is the example of the new times in the Premier, where billionaire owners buy traditional English clubs with the aim of … conquer the football planet. Who was going to tell the Magpies (the Magpies) a few years ago, when the crisis plunged the team into the Championship, that they were going to become the richest club in the world. The appearance in 2021 of the Saudi Public Investment Fund led Yasir Al Rumayyan to assume the presidency of Newcastle and turn it into the richest football club in the world, with backing of 350 billion euros. As a comparison, Sheikh Mansour, owner of Manchester City, has a fortune of 27.3 billion euros and Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, at PSG, is around 12 billion. Athletic, of course, will find a very different entity in its structure and economy than the one it visited in 1994.
The objectives, it is clear, have changed with the change in ownership. Now the word is ambition, although controlled. They do not want to waste money – understood within the parameters of waste that are popular today in the Premier – but rather they are looking for a project with which to place Newcastle among the greats of Europe in the coming years. A return to that glorious past of the second half of the 90s, shortly after Athletic crossed the path of the Magpies in the 1994-95 UEFA Cup. Led by Kevin Keegan, Newcastle was second in the Premier two consecutive seasons (1995-96 and 1996-97), with players like Andy Cole, who was sold to Manchester United in 1995, Keith Gillespie, David Ginola, Faustino Asprilla, Peter Beardsley, Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer, the great emblem of the Magpies with his ten seasons at the club and 206 goals to his name.
The glory days passed and the arrival in 2007 of British billionaire Mike Ashley to the property gave way to seasons to be forgotten. Fans thought that he would invest his fortune in taking the club to the privileged zone of the Premier, but in reality he opted for the minimum investment and the maximum return for his businesses. The result, a fall to the Championship, many attempts to re-emerge and a long wait until October 2021. The Premier League gave the green light to the operation and Newcastle began, from one day to the next, to break all records in the world of football on an economic level, something that clashed with the sporting performance of a team that at that time had 3 points in 8 games.
The first movements dragged Steve Bruce, the coach, who was dismissed while the new management looked for a new coach, a complicated facet because no one trusted that situation. In fact, the desired one was Unai Emery, but the Guipuzcoan coach preferred to stay at Villarreal and in the end the hiring of Eddie Howe was achieved. This unites us with the current Newcastle, since the British coach remains in office and has given sporting stability to the Tyne entity, to the point that in the 2022-23 campaign the club returned to the noble zone of the Premier by finishing fourth. That meant qualifying for a Champions League where Newcastle did not measure up – they were eliminated in the group stage – but last season they won the Carabao Cup – the English League Cup – after beating Liverpool in the final. The Magpies won a title 56 years after that 1968-69 Fairs Cup. And fifth place in the Premier returned them to a Champions League in which the team from the north of England is currently performing much better than in a disappointing Premier League.
Athletic is going to face a team that has won two of its three games –Union Saint Gilloise and Benfica, and has lost against Barcelona– and has scored 8 goals. But in the domestic tournament they are far behind what was expected, since they are 13th with 12 points and have just lost 3-1 against West Ham, which outraged both Eddie Howe and the fans.
Isak’s departure
Newcastle misses the goals of Alexander Isak, who last year was the second top scorer in the Premier with 23 goals. And he also has a very complicated summer due to the former Real’s desire to go to Liverpool. The battle between both parties ended with the transfer of the Swede for 150 million euros. The answer was to sign Nick Woltemade, a 22-year-old striker from Stuttgart, for 75 million, which led to the ridicule of the legendary Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. “I can only congratulate Stuttgart for finding an idiot who paid so much money, because we certainly wouldn’t have done it in Munich.”
The two-meter tall forward has scored four goals, but they seem insufficient in a team called to higher levels. Midfielder Bruno Guimaraes continues to be the leader of that 4-3-3 that Howe bets on and where other players such as Anthony Gordon and Jacob Murphy stand out.
