Saudi Arabia is the new China. “The system of buying the players that almost ended their career is not the system that develops football,” said Uefa’s chief executive Aleksander Ceferin recently. “It was a similar mistake in China ...”
When Oscar left Chelsea in December 2016 in a transfer window during which Chinese Super League clubs spent more than £300m, then Blues manager Antonio Conte warned of the Chinese danger. Other stars such as Carlos Tevez, Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka also moved east. It ended badly with bankruptcies, corruption scandals and no visible improvement in standards.
Now Saudi Arabia is the go-to long-haul destination. Cristiano Ronaldo signed for Al-Nassr in December. Al-Ittihad won the title in May and added Karim Benzema and N’Golo Kanté. Most recently, Al-Hilal, the most successful team in Saudi Arabia and Asia in terms of titles, have got in on the act, signing Rúben Neves from Wolves and Chelsea’s Kalidou Koulibaly. The fourth of the ‘big four’, Al-Ahli, announced the arrival of Édouard Mendy on Wednesday, also from the west London club. Many more are expected before the new season kicks off in August.
The Chinese Experience
It may all look similar to China on the surface but there is a deeper strategy in Riyadh. Before becoming president Xi Jinping said he had three football wishes: to qualify for the World Cup for a second time, host it and eventually win it. Big business, especially property developers looking for political benefits, got involved, taking over clubs and paying over the odds.
The Chinese government soon became alarmed at the amounts of cash leaving the country to line the pockets of foreign clubs, agents and players such as Tevez who described his time in Shanghai as a holiday. The football association lamented that Chinese clubs spent 10 and four times more respectively than their Korean and Japanese counterparts but were still worse. Not long after the famous transfer window of 2016-17, authorities moved to impose a so-called “transfer tax”, a levy on expensive foreign signings, as well as a series of salary caps.
A bigger brake was an economic slowdown especially in the overheated property market and with most top-tier clubs owned in full or in part by heavily-indebted real estate companies, the spending really did stop. The pandemic made it worse. Headlines were no longer about big stars heading east but big clubs going south. Champions Jiangsu FC folded in 2021 and Chongqing and Hebei (once coached by Manuel Pellegrini) went the same way. Guangzhou City dissolved in March. The corporate owners of their more successful neighbours, Guangzhou Evergrande – once hailed as Asia’s first superclub – were £250bn in debt by 2021. The club was forced to field virtual youth teams and was relegated.
Saudi Arabia
This Saudi spending is part of a wider national strategy devised by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that aims to establish the country as a global sporting hub, with the industry a crucial part of a diversified economy that is no longer reliant on oil. At the same time, it will help project Saudi Arabia, to audiences at home and abroad, as a modern, dynamic and innovative business, leisure and tourism destination while, along the way, encouraging an increasingly obese population that playing as well as watching sport is a worthwhile pursuit.
The football league will play a part in those big ambitions, spearheaded by the big four: Al-Nassr and Al-Hilal in Riyadh and Jeddah giants Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli. They will get most of the stars and, after being taken over by the country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which owns Newcastle United and now much of golf, most of the responsibility of dragging the league into the global top 10 in terms of revenue generation by 2030.
Saudi Arabia is better-placed than China and not just because there is a lot more money around: PIF has more than £500bn. On the pitch, it is already a continental powerhouse beating China 6-1 in World Cup appearances, 2-0 in Asian Cup titles and 6-3 in Asian Champions Leagues. Even before this new influx, the league had the best foreign players of any in Asia. In terms of international exposure, it is also no contest. Famous players went to China and virtually disappeared on the other side of the Great Firewall. Ronaldo, the ultimate influencer, keeps his 600 million instagram followers fully updated as to what he, and his family, are up to. Other stars will do the same.
That’s not to say all is rosy. Saudi Arabian clubs have often been poorly run. The debt situation became so bad in 2018 that Al-Nassr and Al-Ittihad were not allowed to participate in the Champions League and clubs were in the collective red to the tune of £300m. The Crown Prince intervened to pay it all off. At the time, there were 107 reported cases of unpaid salaries and disputes at Fifa. Such episodes went unnoticed internationally but that will not be the case now.
As China knows, that’s the price paid – as well as the billions invested in transfers and salaries – for shaking up the existing order. It remains to be seen how many around the world will be tuning in to watch games but almost everyone in football will be waiting to see if Saudi Arabia’s league experiences its own China crisis or establishes itself as a major player for years to come.
• This article was amended on 4 July 2023 to clarify that it was the owner of Guangzhou Evergrande – the Evergrande Group – that was $250bn in debt, not the football club itself.
