Transfers – Real Madrid: Karim Benzema, new spearhead of the Saudi offensive

A second Ballon d’Or therefore joins the Roshn Saudi Pro League, while waiting, who knows, for a third, Léo Messi, official ambassador of Visit Saudi and a time announced in Al Hilal. For the first time, at least in club, Karim Benzema will face his former Real teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo, to whom Al Nassr, runner-up to Al Ittihad in the last Saudi championship, pays an estimated salary of 200 million euros annually to defend its colours.

Last lap

The temptation would be to add: Karim Benzema is 35, Cristiano Ronaldo, 38 (and Leo Messi will be 36 in three weeks). This is the last lap of two great players that time has finally caught up with as it catches up with us all, who are no longer made for Carnegie Hall but can still fill a theater in Las Vegas. This does not imply that these will be cheap shows, unworthy of what they once brought. Simply that summer has given way to fall, and they have tens, hundreds of millions of excellent reasons to spend it elsewhere.

This is partly correct. The “Saudi mirage” (might as well drop the cliché right away) can make you think of the New York Cosmos of Pelé, Cruyff and Beckenbauer, footnote in the gold book of world football, minus the charm. It can also recall what we witnessed in the 2010s in China, when a race for the big and less big names in football between owners of Chinese Super League clubs triggered an uncontrolled hyperinflation of transfers and salaries which attracted, among others, Axel Witsel, Carlos Tévez, Javier Mascherano, Ramires, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Oscar, Jackson Martinez and Hulk in a championship that the rest of the world couldn’t care less about.

The result of this assault was a disaster for Chinese football, which certainly did not need it. The boom lasted only a few seasons, after which the youngest of the expatriates returned to the fold, and the others retired for good, leaving a field of ruins behind them.

Football, a matter of state

The parallel is attractive in appearance, but has no reason to be. What we are witnessing today in Saudi Arabia, and which is only beginning, has nothing to do with the chaos we are seeing in China. It’s that in Saudi Arabia, football is a state affair, in the literal sense.

We had a new illustration of this on Monday, when the PIF, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund which is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and owns 80% of Newcastle United, announced that, within the framework of its “Privatization project and investment in sports clubs”, three Saudi first division clubs, Al Ittihad, Al Nassr and Al Hilal, and one of the second, Al Ahli, had changed their status to be transformed into companies placed under the supervision of the authorities .

A billion dollars to bring in stars

According to New York Timesthe man entrusted with leading the recruitment process is none other than the Briton Garry Cook, executive director of the Roshn Saudi Pro League since last January, who we remember had also held a similar position to Manchester City after Sheikh Mansour became its owner.

Benzema will also play for Saudi Arabia

What is unique about this project is that it aims to transform a league, not just a club, using the league’s flagship clubs as so many bricks in the construction of the league. ‘building. Orders are issued by the palace. The money comes from the sovereign wealth fund. The clubs concerned are integrated into a single entity, as if they were four clubs in one. Karim Benzema won’t just play for Al Ittihad. When he participates in the Asian Champions League or the Club World Cup with Al Ittihad, he will also – literally – play for Saudi Arabia, for the PIF and for Mohammed bin Salman.

Those who imagine that this is only the whim of a prince victim of delusions of grandeur, of an Icarian ambition that will quickly wither in the sun, those are mistaken about the all in all. Ronaldo, Benzema, and maybe even Messi, don’t come to bid farewell to football the way former glories about to leave the stadium circle it in slow motion, just to better savor the applause of the crowd. They are the precursors, the spearheads of an offensive which one wonders who, or what, will have the means to stop it.