From the man who brought you questionable journalistic focus on a player accused of rape, comes an outright #ad for Saudi Arabia.
That’s soccer scoopster Fabrizio Romano, taking a break from many (many) betting app ads and a Super Mario commercial to read a two-minute ad for the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre, a Saudi Arabian government agency focused on, well, humanitarian relief worldwide. The ad is uncomfortable to watch, even without any context: Romano simply dives into the script with no preamble and just begins listing numbers and projects. It’s uncanny to watch a soccer journalist kick off his exultation of a government agency by talking about land mines in Yemen and, later, about conjoined twins that the relief organization has helped separate. This whole thing is a disaster, though hearing Romano say “five hundred forty thousand mines” in the same tone that he might talk about a transfer fee has some form of perverse appeal. The only thing missing was his trademark “Here we go!” catchphrase.
Cutting a paid promo for a state-backed organization would be disconcerting in any context, but it is especially so here given Romano’s position. Taking a check from Saudi Arabia is a poor and embarrassing decision for anyone to make, but Romano isn’t some doofy comedian trying to justify telling jokes in Riyadh. He’s an ostensible journalist, one who consistently covers the Saudi Pro League, and who has now given his followers no choice but to question that coverage. For example, this interview he did on the Men In Blazers show back in December, about how good the Saudi league is getting at selling its quality of life to players, lands quite a bit differently now that we know Romano is on the payroll:
(It’s important to point out here that what Romano is talking about in that interview is a facade; Saudi Arabia has put in a lot of effort and a lot of money into making itself a place where soccer stars from Europe can come and live like royalty, but that only works as long as the facade holds. It’s wallpaper hiding a rough interior, and it’s one that has been peeling for a while now.)
Whether Romano filmed this promo just for the check or because he actually buys into Saudi Arabia’s propaganda is immaterial. Either way, he’s selling his credibility to a country dead set on utilizing soccer, among other enterprises, to launder its international reputation. It’s a minor coup, then, for the country to have such a visible soccer figure promote the its preferred narrative as a force for good in the world, uncritically regurgitating statistics that spotlight Saudi Arabia in a positive manner. Is the timing of this ad, alongside the U.S.-Israel joint attack on Iran and the growing instability in the Middle East, a coincidence? Almost certainly not.
How can anyone take Romano’s reporting seriously on anything to do with Saudi Arabia now? That’s the point of being a scoopster in the first place: If your only job is to beat everyone else to every transfer story, no matter how irrelevant, you never have to have a point of view. If the price to pay for that is that you have to record some soulless promotional material in exchange for a wad of cash, while throwing your ethics to the side, then so be it.
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