All good, thanks for clarification. I guess if I were to try and calculate it, I'd say 50/50 Ronaldo/Money and it sounds like you'd say like 25/75 Ronaldo/Money (or maybe even less, regardless I get your point).
An interesting point on his role is it's really diminishing returns for him now (not financially of course), I personally think he was probably vital in the initial recruitment drive because it is a country with a huge image issue but now there are a lot of big names and his influence as the 'figurehead' will wane quickly. Saudi needed him for this recruitment push but next for them is to sign someone with more credibility as a 'current' elite player.
Just checked to see if any new players had joined and I didn't realise Malcolm had gone there from Zenit. Again he's probably in the good but not elite bracket but I thought we might see him in the PL or back in LL again.
If I understand you correctly, you believe that there is some "critical mass" that has to be achieved to lure players into the league with the competitive perspective. As in "if we just get enough good players, the world will have to accept us as a serious league since there's no denying the quality and the better the competition gets, the easier it is to attract good players". I get what you mean and I'd also say that CR7 adds much to this critical mass but to me, the league is still far from achieving it. IMO, most of the players who joined the league would have joined anyway thanks to the money alone. I'd even say that for many of the star signings (Benzema, Mané, Kanté, Koulibaly to name a few) the fact that they join a league in a muslim country carries much more weight.
But to be honest, I don't think the Saudis are even interested in making the league "competitive" or a real rival product to its European counterparts. They are after the attention that those names generate, not after their qualities as a football player. And precisely because of the deminishing returns that you spoke of, I believe that their spending will eventually dry up and that they won't pose a real threat to the EPL, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga. If they wanted to do so, they would have pursued a different strategy, IMO. But that's a bit offtopic I guess
