Saudi buying up the Italian and Spanish Super Cups has legitimized the nation\u2019s regime, at home and around the world<\/p>\n
In early 2019, a rising star of the Italian far-right took to Twitter to lambaste Serie A\u2019s decision to hold the Supercoppa in Saudi Arabia for the second consecutive year. Giorgia Meloni<\/a> was at that point the leader of a small but growing movement in Italian politics; her Brothers of Italy party had won a little over 4% of the vote in the 2018 general election. The Supercoppa has long been staged outside Italy: previous editions have been held in New Jersey, Beijing, Tripoli, and Doha. But for Meloni, the decision to stage the 2019 final in Riyadh was beyond the pale: she labeled<\/a> it \u201can absolute disgrace,\u201d describing Saudi Arabia as a country that discriminates against women \u201cand our values.\u201d<\/p>\n Meloni\u2019s protest did nothing to throw the Italian football authorities off course. Following a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus, the Supercoppa last year returned to Saudi Arabia, where it will be played until 2029 under the terms of a new deal reportedly worth \u20ac138m. This year saw the inauguration of a four-team format for the competition, contested by the winners and runners-up of the previous season\u2019s Serie A and Coppa Italia; in Monday\u2019s final, staged in the 25,000-seat KSU Stadium in Riyadh (home of Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s Al-Nassr), Inter triumphed thanks to a late goal from Lautaro Mart\u00ednez<\/a>. After sweeping home Benjamin Pavard\u2019s clever cut-back, Mart\u00ednez ran the length of the field to celebrate with the thousand or so Inter fans gathered behind a big \u201cCURVA NORD\u201d banner placed over the sideline hoardings.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saudi buying up the Italian and Spanish Super Cups has legitimized the nation\u2019s regime, at home and around the world In early 2019, a rising star of the Italian far-right took to Twitter to lambaste Serie A\u2019s decision to hold the Supercoppa in Saudi Arabia for the second consecutive year. Giorgia Meloni was at that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}