Saudi Arabia buys club after club, league after league – as if it were a sale. But football clubs are not big banks. In order to save the sport, the old system must first perish.
The story of the end of the sport as we know it may have started on a golf course. One could fill books with the deals that were negotiated at the golf holes of the world, one has even filled books with stories from politicians on golf courses and somewhere in this illustrious orbit also moved the American Jay Monahan and the Arab Yasir Al-Rumayyan, when they hooked up for a round of golf sometime in 2023. The world public only found out about this round later, when both presented the deal they had negotiated on American television.