Riyadh is the capital of winter football. The city received three European Super Cups in a month

Saudi Arabia continues to retain its reputation as the winter capital of sports. After championship fights in boxing and a large-scale wrestling show It’s football’s turn. Riyadh was supposed to accept within a month Super Cup draws of three European countries. One – the Turkish Super Cup – did not take place. The second, the Spanish Super Cup, starts in a week. The third, the Italian Super Cup, will begin on January 18. Both final fours will be hosted by the Cristiano Ronaldo Stadium – Al Nasr – Al Awal.

Real Madrid, Atlético Madrid, Barcelona and Osasuna will play in the Spanish Super Cup. Napoli, Lazio, Inter and Fiorentina will meet in the final four of the Italian trophy. Saudi Arabia will host each of the trophy draws for the fourth time. Al Awal Stadium – for the first time. Which, given recent trends and Ronaldo’s move to Riyadh, is not surprising.

The kingdom began to seriously promote the arena. Before the New Year, the Mentos Gum company became a new sponsor of the stadium, and the commercial division of the local media conglomerate MBC Group took over the advertising of the arena. It is one of the largest media corporations in the Middle East, operating more than 17 free satellite television channels and video-on-demand services. And all this is another part of the large-scale transformation of the country within the framework of the Vision-2030 state program.

According to the authors of the concept for promoting the arena, the Al-Awwal stadium, which seats about 25,000 spectators and attracts half a million spectators per season, should become another evidence of the attractiveness of sports in the country. Considering Al Nasr was the third most popular club in the world last year (Google Trends data), the strategy has every chance of success.

But not everything went smoothly with the Turkish Super Cup. The match between Fenerbahce and Galatasaray, which was supposed to take place on December 29, was postponed indefinitely. The reason for the conflict is the position of the host country authorities, who did not allow teams to wear T-shirts with quotes from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, on the day of the celebration of its centenary, as well as a ban on playing the Turkish national anthem before the match and displaying posters with images of Atatürk . Let’s see how the final four of the Spanish and Italian Super Cups go.