Saudi signing wave: What are the implications? Is it weakening the Premier League?

The only thing that would make the Saudi sides a true competitor to Europe is if current competition formats changed to allow them to compete directly against European sides. If they really want it to and throw enough money at it, eventually that probably will happen, but there's no real sign of it yet.

Well there is because the more eastern ownership there is of European teams the more influence there will be, but it's still a bit of a way off.

It's inevitable eventually really. Football is a global sport and Europe basically hogs all of the best bits of it.
 
I imagine the Saudi end-game will be a Saudi-run world competition. Build up a small number of Saudi clubs, pay Real, Barca, PSG to join them. Add a few clubs from countries where the top team or two has no one to play against, such as Celtic and Rangers.

The old authorities, Fifa and Uefa will counter by declaring players taking part in Saudi competitions will be barred from playing for their national sides, but we've seen that sort of thing in other sports. Money talks, compromises are made.

Change is always hard to imagine, but it happens. Sometimes.
 
It will affect a league like Serie A before it affects the PL, especially clubs at the top.

Also this isn't the same as golf, F1, and boxing. These are sports where you can go abroad for a competition and then return home. Football clubs require you to live in that country and for many, it's a non-starter.
 
If anyone had any doubts about the level of money Saudi have to work with, then the Mbappe transfer bid highlights it. A world record bid for someone just for one year. If the deal is to allow him to leave on a free transfer after a year, it’s even more incredibly absurd.
 
I hope Saudi project fails. I have not even watched a highlight of Ronaldo in Saudi team(don't even know the name of the team he plays at), but I watched Messi in Miami.

I see many players wanna go there to collect a check and it isn't good.

I think, but can't be sure, that the project will fail as it can't sustain itself. If all of a sudden Saudi league becomes something people actually watch, buy jerseys of those teams and start to become fans of Saudi clubs then feck... I'm wrong.
 
RedorDead21 said:
You laugh now but city is a perfect example of what that kind of money can do over a sustained period.
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City and PSG dramatically revamped their squads (and especially their starting 11s) over a two-year period. What the Saudis are doing is a drop in the bucket compared to that.

If they signed 100+ players and managers this summer then they'd have a strong chance. But 20-30 isn't much.
 
red.knight said:
Add in Henderson, Telles, Jota, Mahrez, Allan Saint-Maximin, Moussa Dembele, Jack Hendry, Sadio Mane. That team can challenge for top 4 in the PL.
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There's a lot of "meh" in that list. Most of that lot wouldn't be wanted by a top 4 side.

A few years down the line perhaps but mot the moment, a Saudi "best xi" would not get a sniff of top 4. They've got less than a handful of players who the likes of Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City or Arsenal would want.
 
A league that simply has more money and offers salaries you can't compete with, causing concern for your own league? Welcome to the world of non-PL countries.
 
SirScholes said:
Mate china did the same thing, signed bigger stars than these nobodies and nothing changed.

We are not a weaker league because we don't have saint maximan jesus give your head a wobble
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Oh. Well, I'm sure you've considered this carefully, so I'll give the matter no further thought then. Many thanks.
 
In the short term no, in the long term it will, I've said this before on other threads, this is not just about football.

The Saudi Government has a plan to move their country towards a Dubai style state, making it a tourist and business destination, they are investing trillions in infrastructure towards that end, football is a small part of it.
 
711 said:
I imagine the Saudi end-game will be a Saudi-run world competition. Build up a small number of Saudi clubs, pay Real, Barca, PSG to join them. Add a few clubs from countries where the top team or two has no one to play against, such as Celtic and Rangers.

The old authorities, Fifa and Uefa will counter by declaring players taking part in Saudi competitions will be barred from playing for their national sides, but we've seen that sort of thing in other sports. Money talks, compromises are made.

Change is always hard to imagine, but it happens. Sometimes.
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Saudi will need their league to become self sustainable at some point in the next decade or so, because Saudi doesn't really have that much money as people make it out to be. Their desperation to try and delve into the sporting world comes from their understanding of their precarious position.

I think they have something like the 7th biggest sovereign fund in the world, and it's not likely to get any bigger as the world moves away from an oil dependant economy. The Russia-Ukraine war comes at a time when they can regulate the oil prices for perhaps the last time in the foreseeable future and they are smart enough to recognize that this is the time to channel those huge profits into other revenue streams. But they can't sustain this structure for decades to come, which will be needed if they actively want to challenge European or American dominance of sports.
 
Plastic Evra said:
The view here is very PL centric but they also are on the hunt for younger or good players in other leagues. Saw a young Belgian international joining a club over there ?
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They're still mostly old players.
Looking at their list of transfers this summer, they average 29.3 years. Less than half are under 30.
 
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golden_blunder said:
With respect to the OP they are filing their squads up with players on last legs and absolute guff that are willing to chase that big final pay check.

I said in another thread they are restricted to 8 foreigners per squad. That’s about 160 all in. About 20 are already gone to deadwood players.

until they buy and retain top drawer talent it’s nothing more than a retirement league
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They’d not have any problem lifting the foreigner limit and they have already got many players in their prime, and it’s only been a few weeks since they kicked off this ‘project’.
 
I'd be more worried in the short term if I saw them creating strong teams using top level strategic planning used by European giants. For example, if they swept up the top directors of football, top recruitment teams and utilised them. That would create the potential to hoover up the best talent by putting money in front of them and would weaken what is available to European football. At the moment it is largely past it and irrelevant players with a few exceptions and that doesn't remotely dilute European football.

However, in the medium to long term, if they want to pump many tens or hundreds of billions in then there isn't going to be much to stop them rising to the top. Money talks.
 
Saudi League will be a massive failure because of 2 things.
- It is not a sustainable model with paying players 2X,3X their market value and salary.
- The Middle East is not such a good place to live in when compared to Europe. Terrible hot weather for 6 to 7 months. Nothing much to do there too.

It will always remain as a retirement league as MLS.
 
Red in STL said:
In the short term no, in the long term it will, I've said this before on other threads, this is not just about football.

The Saudi Government has a plan to move their country towards a Dubai style state, making it a tourist and business destination, they are investing trillions in infrastructure towards that end, football is a small part of it.
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Surely they'd need a dubai style government for that to work, and stop chopping off so many heads before that ever happens
 
A decent depth piece on Sky:

Saudi Arabia: What is the nation hoping to achieve amid transfer takeover and what happens next? | Football News | Sky Sports

Some snips:

Sport is one particular area they are looking to grow in the country and that includes their football league. They want to build their own leisure and entertainment industry and tap into the massive amount of interest there is among the Saudi Arabian population - of which 70 per cent is under 40 - in football.

The rulers of Saudi Arabia have seen all this interest and they've thought: 'instead of other people making money from our population's interest in sport, let's make it ourselves and keep the money within our borders.' It wants to put Saudi Arabia on the map and raise its profile.

................
So this is the beginning of a process and not something that is going to go away quickly. Sky Sports News has been told that, within the next five years, Saudi Arabia want 100 of the best foreign players playing in its league.
.................

Mohammed Hamdi, an expert in football in the Middle East and a former director of Al Jazira FC in Abu Dhabi, told Sky Sports News he believes the country would have no problems attracting top talent.

"They have the infrastructure," he said. "They have the country. They can host [a World Cup]. We saw already that in Qatar it was an amazing event.

"This is a long-term vision where you can attract TV contracts, media, sponsorship and more visitors to the country.

"It's not only players at a certain player or basically finalising their careers. You can see there are young players ready to take the step into the Saudi league."

............
A lot of players at the very peak of their careers will say no - but I think that has changed a little bit with Wolves' Neves. He is somebody who Liverpool, Barcelona and Manchester United are interested in, he is only 26 years old, and at the peak of his career, he has decided to go. Obviously a lot of that is down to money.

So it has changed the transfer market as clubs have serious competition from Saudi Arabia - a very lucrative market has opened up.
 
King7Eric said:
Saudi will need their league to become self sustainable at some point in the next decade or so, because Saudi doesn't really have that much money as people make it out to be. Their desperation to try and delve into the sporting world comes from their understanding of their precarious position.

I think they have something like the 7th biggest sovereign fund in the world, and it's not likely to get any bigger as the world moves away from an oil dependant economy. The Russia-Ukraine war comes at a time when they can regulate the oil prices for perhaps the last time in the foreseeable future and they are smart enough to recognize that this is the time to channel those huge profits into other revenue streams. But they can't sustain this structure for decades to come, which will be needed if they actively want to challenge European or American dominance of sports.
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Thank you. I don't have in-depth knowledge of the finance necessary or what percentage of the Saudi sovereign fund that might be. Always willing to learn though, if you can help.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
The situations are not superficially similar. They are pretty much the same. All that's changed is the size of the pile of money.
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Of course they're superficially similar. These are different countries trying to achieve different things for different reasons at different points in time.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
Could you list them?
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Neves, Brozovic, Fofana, Jota, Malcom, Saint-Maximin, Milikovic-Savic are all below 30 and in their prime. Jota is actually below 25 even. Fabinho and Mitrovic who are about to join are also late 20s / early 30s and arguably close to their prime as well.

Firmino, Benzema, Kante are at the stage of their careers where they could play for top European clubs as well. Kante maybe not so much due to his injury concerns but he's still recognized as a top player. Henderson could easily play in England for another 2-3 years.

They've literally kicked this off like 5 weeks ago. They've been putting bids for basically all European players and they are bound to get a lot of success due to how much more money they can offer. They are bound to stockpile some of the good talent from Ligue 1 / Serie A / La Liga.
 
Sarni said:
They’d not have any problem lifting the foreigner limit and they have already got many players in their prime, and it’s only been a few weeks since they kicked off this ‘project’.
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What players of note that aren’t winding down their careers are there? Henderson? Telles? Ronaldo? I ain’t tuning in to watch walking football
 
2022/23 might be the period where the dog eats its own shit when it comes to football. Qatar World Cup, Mbappe off to Saudi for an ungodly amount, Barca complete selling their soul, City winning the Treble with 115 charges against them, the Ronaldo and Messi era ending. Its really a horrible time for football. Also, whether you like to admit it, if we are bought by Qatar, for a lot of people around the world that is a big knife into the tradition of the sport.
 
I was expecting an MLS style sign older players. The world of football will be watching now this is about to get crazy
 
golden_blunder said:
What players of note that aren’t winding down their careers are there? Henderson? Telles? Ronaldo? I ain’t tuning in to watch walking football
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Just listed them above. They've only started, I bet they are at least 20-25 more by the time Summer ends. It's very selective to name those players specifically when there's an equal amount of recognized players under 30 who have gone there as well.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
City and PSG dramatically revamped their squads (and especially their starting 11s) over a two-year period. What the Saudis are doing is a drop in the bucket compared to that.

If they signed 100+ players and managers this summer then they'd have a strong chance. But 20-30 isn't much.
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Of course but 20-30 players is just the first window they’ve ever really committed like this. There are 2 windows a season so I imagine the numbers will only increase. Like I said afew weeks back I imagine they could become the first stop for South American young talent because of the Cash soon enough and their ability to hoover up lots of youngsters from there and gamble more than most on their development. It’s feasible in 5 years time their prospects as a serious league could really start to show fruition that’s all I’m suggesting.
 
Sarni said:
Just listed them above. They've only started, I bet they are at least 20-25 more by the time Summer ends.
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Oh yeah I don’t doubt there will be but it will contain the likes of Bailley and other drop outs that can’t be sold elsewhere
 
Sarni said:
Just listed them above. They've only started, I bet they are at least 20-25 more by the time Summer ends. It's very selective to name those players specifically when there's an equal amount of recognized players under 30 who have gone there as well.
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I said players of note
 
golden_blunder said:
I said players of note
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Well if you are only counting players City/Bayern/Real/Barca would normally sign, then there are not many. I'd say all of those players are quite notable, I don't consider mid-table/top half Premier League talent to be crap and meaningless. It's already more notable than anything MLS/China have acquired.
 
SirScholes said:
Surely they'd need a dubai style government for that to work, and stop chopping off so many heads before that ever happens
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The aim is to make Saudi a tourist and business destination, they've stated this many times and they're not stupid, they know they can't achieve that by constantly chopping peoples heads off, things will change
 
Red in STL said:
The aim is to make Saudi a tourist and business destination, they've stated this many times and they're not stupid, they know they can't achieve that by constantly chopping peoples heads off, things will change
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I won't hold my breath on it, would need a massive change, almost a whole generation will need to pass id imagine. Im not very schooled on this though just from the outside looking in, and that they are top 3 for executions in the world.

Couple of pals in that area tell me that a lot of people in Saudi head to Bahrain for a weekend away
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Start by putting on 11 together in a formation that would fight for top 4 before making such outlandish claims.
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I mean I haven’t kept up with a lot of the signings as there is more and more every day. They might not have a top four quality left back for example.


But Mahrez- Benzema - Mane is a great front three and in Brozovic, Savic and Henderson they’ve got a range of CL level midfielders.
 
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