In November, the Saudi Pro League’s director of football Michael Emenalo predicted that the January transfer window would be quieter than most expected.
“Hopefully the attention will now turn to work within the training facilities to improve these players,” Emenalo said while keeping a straight face. Yes, after all those years at elite Champions League clubs, it’s Riyadh and Jeddah where these 30-something superstars are really going to kick on.
Emenalo was at least half-right. The incomings into Saudi Arabia in the first 17 days of the window have been… entirely non-existent.
Mo Adams, once of Boston United, is the only permanent signing and he moved internally from Al-Shabab (11th) to Al-Khaleej (10th). No offence to Mo, who started a few MLS games before arriving in the Middle East, but he’s not quite a poster boy.
But there is still noise aplenty – Emenalo got that wrong. This week, Jordan Henderson has formalised the termination of his Al-Ettifaq contract and is escaping to Europe. Reports in Spain claim that Karim Benzema failed to show up to Al-Ittihad’s training camp and is unhappy. Both those two are club captains in the Pro League. This is not a good look.
A third captain is also linked with a move away. Roberto Firmino, of Al-Ahli, has three goals in his last 17 appearances and hasn’t started a league game since October.
At 32, there will be managers across Europe musing on the “does a job” principle and some of them may be in the bottom half of the Premier League. Contract terminations mean no up-front costs for the club.
Another relevant case is Ruben Neves, who was linked with a loan move to Newcastle United but whose answer was roughly: “No thanks, I’m happy here” (and good luck to him). But Neves started five of Portugal’s six UEFA Nations League games and four of their five matches at the 2022 World Cup. Since moving to Saudi Arabia, he has started one international game, away in Liechtenstein.
Henderson being courted so publicly by Ajax suggests that his reputation within the game has barely suffered. Could there be a bigger lurch in top-level than from the game’s dystopian future to a pillar of its storied history? Imagine if Henderson had gone straight there, as he surely now wishes he had. Liverpool to Ajax is a PR-gasm. Al-Ettifaq to Ajax is a rescue mission. But he has been rescued.
Henderson also looked to escape as soon as possible. Had he given it six more months in front of small crowds and within a poor general standard of play, he may well have missed out on Euro 2024 completely. He cut his losses on an asap basis. He looked after No 1 then and he did the same now.
The Saudi Pro League was certainly intended as an exercise in extreme pull-factors: the money, the promised opulence, the facilities, the gentler pace of the professional game, the retirement community with new familiar faces arriving all the time.
Just pull the emergency cord in the bathroom and notes will come tumbling down from the ceiling. Just ring a bell and someone will drive your family somewhere where they feel happier, probably at great expense.
You may well scoff at the notion that Henderson’s exit matters to any league that is intent on using state wealth to legitimise its sporting pursuits and diversify from other, less salubrious reputations. He may seem like a dot on a broadening horizon. If you are crying over this spilt milk, it doesn’t say much for what else is in the fridge.
But that misses the point. The true success of this league does not just lie in the identity of its biggest superstars: Cristiano Ronaldo, Riyad Mahrez, Sadio Mane, Neymar, N’Golo Kante, Karim Benzema. That only provides a paper-thin context, a series of marketing campaigns (which may be all Saudi Arabia want, given that they already have their World Cup).
It is fuelled instead by the general standard of the second-tier players and, in a nation whose national team is ranked 56 in the world, those players are going to be imports. They understand that: squads for next season are being cut to 25 and the number of foreign players per team increased to 10.
Those foreign places, and those who fill them, hold the key. If they are often filled by uncapped Brazilians, nomadic African internationals and the names of European players you had half-forgotten or never knew, it will not work long term.
They need a mass movement not of superstars, but familiar names from regular teams who are happy to accept below-superstar money. *Drags on cigarette* “Adam Maher, now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time”.
Players talk. Players’ families talk. Players’ agents talk. Sometimes they don’t even have to. The footballing world knows that Henderson thought that this was a good idea and quickly learned that the dream he had been sold was, to him and his family, a dud.
That will make others think twice. His is a cautionary tale of greed, of wasted allyship and wasted time, but it is also a warning to Saudi Arabia. You can buy everything other than the things that a league needs to feel legitimate: heritage, atmosphere, established competition, history.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/4bezVig
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