Who is supposed to keep up?
Saudi excess is rocking football
By Tobias Nordman
8/1/2023 8:53 p.m
The transfer offensive of the football clubs from Saudi Arabia is breaking all borders. Only at Lionel Messi and at the moment the most valuable player in the world, at Kylian Mbappé, do the clubs bite their teeth. The unexpected excess is not good news for football.
You got used to it. Almost every day a footballer with a famous name is drawn to Saudi Arabia. A few club names are now common: Al-Nassr, Al-Hilal or Al-Ettifaq. Where there was incredulous amazement weeks ago, there is now an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. Not even the sums called up cause outrage. More for amusement. For example, that the Al-Hilal, which had gone wild, offered the Qatari-French giant Paris St. Germain 300 million euros for Kylian Mbappé and 700 million euros in salary – per year. A great story. Even better that the Frenchman refused.
He belongs to an elite group of players who do not succumb to the excessive courtship of the Saudi clubs. The second prominent representative is Lionel Messi. Another: Heung-Min Son. He wants to stay in the Premier League. Messi preferred Inter Miami’s gigantic offer to the possibly even more gigantic offer from Al-Hilal. What a life. And Al-Hilal? Doesn’t bury himself in the desert sand, but simply courts the next one after the two superstars have turned down. It should now be Victor Osimhen. The outstanding striker from SSC Napoli, who made the whole of Europe, including FC Bayern, excited. But the Munich waved in the person of club father Uli Hoeneß. Too expensive!
Two words that don’t exist in Saudi football vocabulary. They are said to have bid 140 million euros for the Nigerians. Sure, the money flows into the market, it ends up with the clubs. They’re getting richer, but they’re still not catching up one meter in the price spiral, in the fight for new stars. Who is supposed to keep up?
Mané increases his salary massively
The situation would be completely different if only the clattering old masters of the game rode into their footballing sunset with bulging saddlebags. But the officials have long been trampling like wild bulls across Europe’s football pastures and taking what they can get. Too expensive? Iwo! Players in their prime change, such as Liverpool’s Fabinho (29) or the 41-time Portuguese international Ruben Neves (26). Sadio Mané, the failed world star of FC Bayern, has also signed a contract with Al-Nassr. At the age of 31, despite his sad time in Munich, he would certainly have had good opportunities in Europe. He himself did not force the change, he would have liked to stay with the record champions. Small consolation: instead of allegedly “only” 25 million euros per gross, he should earn 40 million euros net in the future. Who is supposed to keep up?
The Bundesliga? Rather not. Borussia Dortmund’s sports director Sebastian Kehl warned in the “kicker” interview of the consequences of financial excesses. It is becoming apparent “that the gap between English clubs and the rest of Europe has grown again. And now there is another player in Saudi Arabia who is throwing around so much money that it almost makes you dizzy.” . That can no longer be justified rationally. “It is simply not possible to explain these sums, which are paid specifically in Saudi Arabia. They are changing the market and making it even more difficult for us to act.” “In the meantime, not only old stars would go there, but also younger players. If this continues, football will develop in a direction that will definitely cause it great damage”.
Bayern Munich’s coach Thomas Tuchel is not yet able to assess how this uninhibited situation will affect the football market. “I don’t really have a clever answer to that question,” he confessed during Bayern’s Asia trip in Singapore. “It’s a very new situation, similar to when China started their league. It’s kind of a similar gold rush there now. It’s the next league trying to become more popular and branded. They’ve won over a lot of players, a lot Quality players – and even coaches.” It’s a completely new situation. “And it’s too early for me to have a clear opinion on that.” He is an observer of current developments, “a surprised observer”.
The football threatens to turn onto a one-way street. Anyone who has succumbed to excess seems hardly fit for a return and integration into the western labor market. That doesn’t matter to the Saudi movers and shakers, for them breaking the salary limit is also a way of securing their own attractiveness. Otherwise, only the clubs that are owned by oligarchs or states remain as competitors. Like Paris St. Germain, like Manchester City or like Newcastle United, which is owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF. And triggers great euphoria among their own fans. The club is enjoying a remarkable resurrection. That would be hard to imagine in Germany. The rejection of investors in the fan circles is gigantic, most recently demonstrated impressively in the failed attempt by the DFL to thread an external billion-dollar deal.
A thunderbolt to a premium product
There is no end in sight to the excessiveness: first the old world stars around Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, then the international top players like N’Golo Kanté, Roberto Firmino or Riyad Mahrez and now the stars of the current generation are coming into focus. The Saudi transfer offensive is the largest and most spectacular attempt to convert a meaningless league into the premium product of the sport with a thunderbolt. A few years ago, China made a similar attempt, but with less force — and it quickly failed. Will history repeat itself in Saudi Arabia? The League’s breath seems long, the Kingdom’s plan far greater. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to change his country and the world of sport – fundamentally. The center of power should shift from Europe to his kingdom. And even in politics, the country is increasingly longing for a leadership role, hosting a conference at the weekend in preparation for peace talks for Ukraine.
The seemingly inexhaustible sovereign wealth fund PIF (Public Investment Fund) serves as a vehicle for this. Up to 600 billion euros are said to be in the pot, income from the bubbling oil wells. Five clubs already have access to the financial mega-resources. But it is no longer just football that is to be incorporated. Gigantic boxing matches have been and will continue to be held on the desert floor, Formula 1 does its rounds in Jeddah, and even the golfing elite are now making full use of “blood money” from Saudi Arabia. Cycling is already being targeted, including the super team of Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard Jumbo-Visma, and tennis is also being courted.
Human rights hardly count in the country. In the current ranking of press freedom, the country is ranked 170th, only ten nations are rated even worse. There are executions and contract killings, like that of journalist and regime critic Jamal Kashoggi. Investing in football and the like is sports washing, as a vehicle to the outside world. And a kind of social contract internally. The young population longs for events and stars. For this she doesn’t rebel against the repressive system, doesn’t protest. After all, the Arab Spring of 2011 is still alive – as a threat to those in power.
FIFA thinks it’s great
But football remains the prestige project. The sport that fascinates the world the most. And who gave the national team a great sporting moment at the World Cup in Qatar. They were the only nations to celebrate a win against world champions Argentina in the tournament.
And the Saudis have a powerful ally. The FIFA. More precisely: FIFA boss Gianni Infantino. The constantly repeated and very benevolent representation of Saudi Arabia by the world association is no coincidence. The connections between the Swiss patriarch and the Saudi crown prince are becoming ever closer. The feasibility of a World Cup every two years, which Infantino so longed for, was requested by the kingdom quite by accident, and the award of the Club World Cup provides further evidence of this bizarre partnership.
And here, too, there is no end in sight, but the next fixed point is already being targeted: Saudi Arabia wants to host the World Cup in 2034. On the way to this goal, they proceed strategically. Since they give their originally planned application for 2030 little chance in view of the well-known competition, they have allegedly canceled their targeted co-hosts Egypt and Greece. At the same time there are rumors that FIFA could move its power center to the Kingdom – football is changing. However, the weekend showed how far the road from the dream to the top league is. Al-Ahli, the new team of Roberto Firmino and Salzburg coach Matthias Jaissle, lost 6-2 to Heidenheim, who had been promoted to the Bundesliga. Their coach Frank Schmidt admitted afterwards: “Unfortunately, that wasn’t the test we were hoping for today. The field was completely under water at the end, so that a real football game was no longer possible. But the quality of the opponent in particular wasn’t what we saw as a challenge need in the training camp.”