I'm not sensitive but you were being snarky -- if I had "very quickly just watch several of their matches in the last few days" when in reality it was a simple statement. I didn't think there were many foreign players in the Saudi league because I never heard of it. I assumed it would be a total piss take for Ronaldo who would go there running rings around defenders even at this age but clearly that wont be it. I can honestly see him struggling.
Saudi League thread
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If it was a simple statement, it should be a simple explanation. That's a shame that you took it as snarky but your original statement did invite the question. Even now, you can't really say with any sense of logic or confidence that you have a better feel for the level of the actual matches just by throwing a few names out there. Anyway, the thread continues...
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That's either great parody or a bit sad.
thought that was Ronaldo tweeting for a secondBut surely he has to write something similar from time to time. I mean, that is more of a reason why he is being paid 200 million per year.
Ah, its great.Great day today.
This thread has potential.
This thread has potential.
Is this thread for Ronaldo fanboys basically?
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Hope they take a few of ours then
Let's just hope they don't buy their way into UEFA competitions.
How would that work? They're not in Europe
Neither is Israel.
"A lot of big names" is just old players and a few journeymen.
Can't they just move Newcastle there? It would solve one potential problem for us in the future
There are countries in Asia (including some further away form Europe than Saudi) playing in UEFA…
It's only a matter of time before that league starts signing top quality European, South American and African players in their prime. Players are not going to ignore that amount of money.
They should.
I don't think there are any further away. At least not by the common geographical Ural mountains/Caucasus Mountains/Caspian Sea division point.
I have no idea what this means. And I don’t really understand Geography… But looking online tells me the distance from Nyon (UEFA’s headquarters) to Riyadh is shorter than the distance to Astana… of course the differences vary depending on which UEFA country you consider. Either way, compared to kazakhstan it seems Saudi Arabia is closer to about 80% of UEFA’s member countries.
Perhaps the map can help (contemporary definition):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#Contemporary_definition
A small part of Kazakhstan is actually in Europe.
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Well geographically it means you can argue that about 15% of Kazakhstan is in Europe. Countries that are transcontinental usually get the option to choose who to join, and Kazakhstan have played in both AFC and UEFA. As far as the practical issues for flight distance, yeah a lot of clubs would be closer to Riyadh than Astana, but quite a few wouldn't...British, Dutch, Belgian, most German, , Czechia, Poland, Baltics, Nordic countries, most Ukrainian, most Russian if they ever get reinstated.
Something is seriously wrong with the Saudis. First they gave a shit ton of money to Masa Son to invest in shit tech companies and when that went bust they went and bought Newcastle and are putting tons of money into it.
Murmurs of them investing / competing with the IPL as well. I assume there's some national security thing and not just rich people with too much $$$. Maybe something to do with the post fossil fuel economy?
Murmurs of them investing / competing with the IPL as well. I assume there's some national security thing and not just rich people with too much $$$. Maybe something to do with the post fossil fuel economy?
This could potentially infuse a lot of money into European leagues by way of outbound transfers to Saudi.
It looks like Saudi league is the new Chinese league.
And how well did that go?
I doubt it. It seems they are mostly after aging free agents now, and will not be able to attract players who can actually merit a transfer fee for a while.
Many players over 32-33 will go there now instead of playing out the final years of their careers in Europe or US though.
It is only a matter of time Saudi Ariabia sees that this is a pointless strategy that has no long term value.
Why would it be a pointless strategy? Would their league not love to have Mbappé, Vinicius, Haaland etc. (for example) in their prime?
Starting with a 100m purchase of Martin Dubrakva. And FFP will stand still and watch again, as usual .
The chances of those players going there in their prime are next to nothing.
All they have to do is look at how well it worked in China.
Doesn't matter how much money they throw at it. Nobody gives a shit about their league.
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I'd love to catch a game myself, but they always clash with the BayWatch reruns! So typical! I mean, who wouldn't trade a thrilling football match for some slow-motion beach running and cheesy dialogue? It's a tough choice, but I'm sure I'd be head over heels for the dramatic lifeguard action and dazzling swimsuits.
The age of the players wouldn't matter. Ronaldo and Messi are of course quite old and are having something like 700m thrown at them. If MBS thinks he can use a Saudi league crammed full of European stars to sport wash his way into international relevance again, then he will throw far more money at it than what the Premier League tv deal has done to European football. What the article suggests is the Saudis would spend 4x the £5.1billion of the Premier League deal. That would seriously throw off the balance of power in every big European league because of the money being thrown at clubs. Not saying this would definitely happen, but its certainly a possibility given the unprecedented sums of money being thrown around.
The Saudi league is like the MLS but on steroids
They are totally different projects. China was always done with the intention of improving the national team. Bring in better players to train with the locals, improve their level etc to improve the national team. The ability to naturalise some of them was with bonus too, which is why they often aimed for more obscure Brazilians etc to go along with the more high profile players. China was also a lot stricter on the rules regarding foreign players in the starting 11's. Saudi is 7 allowed now. I think China at peak was maybe 5, but it kept getting reduced as the amount of foreigns was impacting the development of local players, which was counter intuitive to their plans.
Saudi's aim is to improve the league to the point of being one of the best in the world. The current plan is to get a load of high profile nearly retired pros to attract younger, higher quality players to want to play with them, and then slowly decrease the age of the older players that are being signed. The stumbling block for me is that a 25 year old who can get £300k a week in London, probably isn't going to be as swayed by £2 mil a week to live in Riyadh.
Following on from my post earlier in this thread about being unsure if Ronaldo improved them much. He didn't, however he did manage to make every single game harder for Nassr. Every single team they played was so motivated against him. Towards the end of the season they were playing clubs who had nothing to play for and were barely trying, except against Nassr. I'm assuming Messi and Benzema will provide similar motivation for all their opponents next season too.
I'm not reading that @Spiersey I'm not that interested.