Protests over the decision to hold the Italian Super Cup in Jeddah have grown since murder of Jamal Khashoggi in October
When, early last June, the Italian football league agreed a €20m deal to play three of the next five Italian super cups in Saudi Arabia, it provoked very little controversy. This is, after all, a trophy that has frequently been decided on foreign soil, sometimes in quite unlikely locations.
In 2002, the year that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi bought 6.4m shares in Juventus, the Supercoppa brought the Turin side to play Parma in Tripoli. Since then the match has been hosted once by the United States, twice by Qatar and four times by China. Wednesday’s game between Milan and Juve in Jeddah will be the sixth time in 10 years that the Supercoppa has been decided outside Europe.
It took until October before opposition to the match started to bubble and brew, as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi turned the spotlight on to associations – sporting and political – with the Saudis. “We must immediately reverse the decision to play the Supercoppa in Riyadh,” said the former sports minister Luca Lotti, a member of parliament for the opposition Partito Democratico. “The world of sport cannot let itself fall behind. I can imagine that there are various economic interests behind this match but what took place in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul cannot pass in silence.” He called on the government to “use all necessary measures to prevent Italian football from striking a blow against values and rights”.
In November Gaetano Miccichè, the Serie A president, contacted the Italian ambassador in Riyadh to discuss whether to move the game and was strongly advised not to do so. “Football is a part of the Italian culture and economy and it cannot have an approach, certainly in the field of international relations, different to that of its homeland,” Miccichè said. “Saudi Arabia is Italy’s largest trading partner in the middle east. Dozens of important Italian companies trade there and have bases there, and none of these relationships have ended [since Khashoggi’s murder]. With the approval of Fifa, Uefa and the Asian Confederation, we are going to play a match in a country with its own laws, created over many years, where local traditions impose constraints that cannot be changed overnight.”
Controversy over the match ebbed for a while, until Serie A released ticket details at the start of this year – and revealed that large parts of the stadium would be out of bounds for women, who are permitted only inside designated family areas. The game sold out in a few hours but suddenly debate was as hot as the tickets. Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and a keen Milan fan, fumed: “For the Supercoppa to be played in an Islamic country where women cannot go into the stadium unless they are accompanied by a man is sad. It’s disgusting. I won’t watch the game.” Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, said the game “should be organised in a country that respects our women and our values”.
On Friday Codacons, a consumer and civil rights organisation, asked fans not to watch live coverage of the game, which will be shown by the public service broadcaster Rai, “as a form of protest against the crazy policies of Saudi Arabia and the odious discrimination against women which is still rife not only in Arab countries but also in Italy”.
Miccichè, however, insisted the advent of family sections in Jeddah’s King Abdullah Sports City Stadium was a positive development. “The Supercoppa will go down in history as the first official international football competition which Saudi women were permitted to watch live,” he said. “We are working to ensure that in the next games we will play in the country, women will be able to access all parts of the stadium.”
But condemnation has not been universal. Giovanni Malagò, president of the Italian Olympic Association, said that those leading the outcry were engaged in “a triumph of hypocrisy”, having raised few objections to existing trade agreements between the countries. “If you take their money, you have to take what comes with it,” said the television presenter Ilaria D’Amica. “Otherwise you need to make it clear from the start: I’ll bring you the Supercoppa but in return we want respect for women. Instead, when the decision was made to play the game in Jeddah, everyone was silent.”
Milan qualified for the Supercoppa by reaching the final of last season’s Italian Cup, where after a goalless first half Juventus eventually cantered to a 4-0 win. Juve lead Serie A by nine points, having won 17 and lost none of their 19 matches; Milan are 22 points behind after winning one of their last five. Hope for the Rossoneri comes from memories of the 2016 Supercoppa between the same teams in Doha, for which they were similarly unfancied but which they won on penalties after a 1-1 draw.
They will be without the Spanish forward Suso, suspended after being sent off against Spal at the end of December, while Juventus may also be missing a key attacker, with Mario Mandzukic ruled out of this weekend’s cup game against Bologna with a thigh injury and considered doubtful. Consensus, however, is that Juve can win without Mandzukic while Milan cannot win without a miracle.
“Everyone agrees who the favourites are,” says Davide Calabria, the Milan full-back. “Their players are at the highest level while our team is a work in progress. It will be hard to win but it’s not impossible. We proved in Doha that they are not unbeatable. Even if we go into the game as underdogs, it starts at 0-0 and we’ll give everything.”
