German side Mainz 05 will resist calls from their own fans to cancel an upcoming friendly with Newcastle United in Austria. The Bundesliga club have been bombarded with messages in recent days as supporters took issue with the Magpies' Saudi ownership.
Mainz fans released a statement earlier this week, urging their side to 'take a stand' by cancelling the July 18th clash. However, those wishes have been rejected on Tuesday and the friendly will go ahead later this month.
"A friendly against a big English club is first of all a really good test for us. It’s also important for our team’s pre-season preparations," said Mainz chairman Stefan Hofmann. "After weighing up our options and not having an appropriate alternative opponent of this standard available, we agreed to play this game.
“We didn’t expect the reaction we got from some fans. We respect them and regret that these concerns have arisen because it’s our responsibility to start the new season as one big unit together with our fans.”
Mainz fans believe playing Newcastle 'actively offers the Saudi regime a stage and thus indirectly recognises it politically'. Fan group 'Supporters Mainz E.V' sent an open letter to the German side earlier this week explaining their stance.
"The motive for this was probably less the enthusiasm for football or the identification with the club Newcastle United than the so-called 'sportwashing' - the attempt to polish the image of Saudi Arabia by entering international football," it read. "We recall that Saudi Arabia is not only an absolute monarchy in which democratic participation of its citizens has no place, but a country in which fundamental human rights are systematically disregarded.
"Suppression of freedom of expression and
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