Benzema, Ronaldo and Co.
Senior League of Stars: Why Saudi Arabia is attracting more and more footballers to the desert
Karim Benzema thanks the fans in Jeddah for the great welcome show
© AFP
The Saudi Pro League is becoming the senior league of soccer stars. Ronaldo and Benzema are already there, Kanté is on the way, Lukaku and Neymar should have offers. Behind this is a strategic plan to lead the country into the future.
The show was worthy of a star like Karim Benzema. The lasers burned a tiger’s head into the night sky, which snarled menacingly over Jeddah’s King Abdullah Sports City Stadium, cheering more than 60,000 thousand spectators. A few moments later, Karim Benzema entered the stadium through a line of children and was greeted by a presenter in the center circle. Benzema’s appearance was garnished with an opulent light and laser show and fireworks. The glowing mobile phones on the stands of the darkened arena gave the impression of a starry sky.
Benzema, World Footballer of the Year 2022 and five-time Champions League winner, is the second transfer coup of the Saudi Pro League, Saudi Arabia’s football league, after Ronaldo. Benzema will now play for Al Ittihad FC, the reigning champions. In the league games he will face his former Real Madrid club-mate Cristiano Ronaldo. He had already switched to Al Nassr FC, which is based in the capital Riyadh, in January. More big names are to follow: Chelsea FC N’Golo Kanté, once the world’s best six and 2018 world champion, is said to be on the way and becoming a teammate of Benzema. Top players such as Lukaku (Inter Milan), Busquets (FC Barcelona until summer) or Neymar (Paris Saint-Germain) are said to have also received offers.
The spectacular transfers are the first result of a long strategy and football plays an important role in it. It’s less about developing your own league organically than about the big goal of the world championship. Saudi Arabia wants to follow the example of Qatar – together with Egypt and Greece – to host the 2030 World Cup. For Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country, hosting the World Cup would be a great success on the way to modernizing the country. Saudi Arabia also wants to be a global player in sports.
Saudi Arabia has systematically expanded its involvement in sports
The Saudi Arabian state fund recently took over clubs Al-Nassr, Al-Hilal, Al-Ittihad and second division champions Al-Ahli in order to finance further stars. Because the salaries for Ronaldo and Benzema are astronomical and must be financed. A football club cannot do this alone. Ronaldo is said to receive 200 million euros a year, Benzema supposedly half.
The Saudi clubs are in good company with the Premier League club Newcastle United, which the Saudi state fund bought back in October 2021 (price: 373 million dollars) and pimped with millions of euros. The result: the former middle class club has now qualified for the Champions League. The Saudis only received a rebuff from the very greatest. Instead, Lionel Messi moved to Major League Soccer in Miami for sponsorship from Apple and Microsoft. After all, Messi was won as a tourism ambassador for the desert state.
Before investing heavily in football, the country invested in other sports. Numerous competitions have been brought to the country in recent years: a Formula 1 race, the Dakar Rally, the Handball Club World Cup, the Fifa Club World Cup 2023, the WWE Wrestling League, the Italian Football Supercup, the Spanish Supercup , a tennis tournament, boxing matches and its own golf series. Saudi Arabia is at the forefront. The 2029 Asian Winter Games, which are taking place in Saudi Arabia, a country that is 60 percent desert, illustrates just how great the will is. Traditional locality no longer exists. With the sheikh billions, anything is possible, no matter how absurd it may seem.
Sportswashing allegations
Behind the grand plan is a conscious soft-power strategy that some Gulf states have been pursuing for a long time. Qatar has achieved the most visible success so far by hosting the 2022 World Cup. The first World Cup in an Arab country is seen as a shining culmination of this strategy, and has given a boost to Saudi Arabia’s aspirations to also shine. Because it’s not just about football or sport in general. The super-rich oil states gain prestige and influence through major international events without exercising economic or military power.
In the West, the development is viewed critically. The World Cup in Qatar made it clear that things are shifting. Europe may be the undisputed leader in football, but for how much longer? One of the accusations from the West is that all of the investments are primarily about sports washing, which the sheikh autocracies use to distract attention from human rights violations. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with no freedom of the press or freedom of expression, and women and minorities are oppressed. The dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in 2018. US intelligence services blame Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for the brutal murder.
Source: “sports show“, “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“, “Deutschlandfunk“, DPA