Saudi League

[DCWat]

It will never take off because most proper football fans don’t want it.

It’s not the ‘proper fans’ that will be their audience. For every proper fan, I suspect there are hundreds or thousands that follow a player as opposed to a team.

[jrgbfc]

Bloke I work with who’s on very good money with a HUGE pension pot - but he’s been given a training role and kept his salary from his previous role which was more intense.

He openly says he’s gone as soon as they take the old salary off him and try and put him on a different salary - he’s just topping up his pension pot (even though he has over £1mil in there anyway in his early 60s).

What’s the difference with Henderson? He can earn another decades wage in the next couple of years to stay fit and healthy and kick a ball about with some class players - get a new experience of being in Saudi and the. Come back (or stay) and never worry about his grand kids having to struggle.

Is that really something to aspire to though? Knowing the future generations of your family are going to grow up spoilt and never have to live in the real world?
And is living in Saudi really an "experience"? The lads seeing out their careers in America have got the right idea.

[CoolClaret]

You’d be hard pressed to find many people truthfully say they wouldn’t do something they love doing for a couple of years and they got a stupid amount of money for doing it.

We’ll never be in that position but if we were, no doubt we’d be making sure the air con was on ready for our arrival to the mansion we’d just been given.

after earning a wad playing the game as is? I don’t think I would in all honesty.

I also think we should tax people that earn obscene money tax free over seas but want to come back and buy up uk assets with money earned in a different country… but that’s for a different discussion

[Boss Hogg]

I’m not interested in it and I don’t know anyone who is Dont know the teams anyone plays for or care if one team beats the other 10-0 every week. There are some things money just can’t buy. If they persist at throwing money at it over a long period of time it probably will be one more popular or known and the standard may improve. It has a long way to go though. Not sure Europeans care about the Chinese, Japanese or US leagues all of which have had money thrown at them.

[Spijed]

What’s the difference with Henderson? He can earn another decades wage in the next couple of years to stay fit and healthy and kick a ball about with some class players - get a new experience of being in Saudi and the. Come back (or stay) and never worry about his grand kids having to struggle.

Let's face it, if his grand kids couldn't be supported with a fantastic lifestyle on what he'd already earned at Liverpool then he's probably taken some seriously bad financial advice.

Your average Premier league salary will mean a footballer can support their entire family with a luxurious standard of living, that most can only dream of.

[TheFamilyCat]

It’s not the ‘proper fans’ that will be their audience. For every proper fan, I suspect there are hundreds or thousands that follow a player as opposed to a team.

I see plenty of kids walking round in Ronaldo shirts. I find it bizarre personally that they'd wear the shirt of a club they'd never heard of because of one player but maybe I'm just getting old.

[Damo]

I'd watch grass roots every day of the week over this vulgar nonsense.
Perhaps its what football needs to make it affordable for the average fan in the UK.

[Nonayforever]

I see plenty of kids walking round in Ronaldo shirts. I find it bizarre personally that they'd wear the shirt of a club they'd never heard of because of one player but maybe I'm just getting old.

It is bizarre, but it's today's world.
They want to fit in, be accepted, be part of the party. They want to wear the t shirt, say they have had a brilliant time, take photos & videos to upload to their friends to say look at me. Whilst all the time it's a drag, bur can't admit it.
Unfortunately, in todays x factor world they outnumber the sensible ones by a huge factor.
Football will only follow the inevitable TV audience, and disappointingly the TV audience outnumbers the loyal fans.

[claret2018]

I do think the football world is changing quickly, and the PL probably doesn’t have that much longer as the number 1 league in the world. Once the top players get enticed out to Saudi by the wages the global audience will follow.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing if this is what it takes for English football to come back down to Earth.

[Spiral]

Bloke I work with who’s on very good money with a HUGE pension pot - but he’s been given a training role and kept his salary from his previous role which was more intense.

He openly says he’s gone as soon as they take the old salary off him and try and put him on a different salary - he’s just topping up his pension pot (even though he has over £1mil in there anyway in his early 60s).

What’s the difference with Henderson? He can earn another decades wage in the next couple of years to stay fit and healthy and kick a ball about with some class players - get a new experience of being in Saudi and the. Come back (or stay) and never worry about his grand kids having to struggle.

Is the bloke you're working with putting on blinkers and offering himself up as a tool to be used to expedite the politics of a despotic regime that butchers and mutilates women and children? I know Britain is rounding up illegal immigrants and housing them in terrible places in pursuit of some paranoid nationalistic island-mentality politics that the morons in charge of the country think is what the people actually want, but as bad as UK govt is, the Saudis are actually shooting their immigrants dead in the mountains. Women and children shot to pieces, blown up and torn in half, strewn across the mountains. And those women and children who make it to detention centres alive are often raped. This has all been reported by Human Rights Watch. This is the ugly face of Saudi Arabia the government is desperate to hide with an ornate mask, a mask bejewelled with globally-reputable sports and entertainment. This is what Henderson is contributing to. No matter how much he and others want to distance their conscience from it by playing ignorant, their active participation in something that exists purely to scrub up a stain on that country's global reputation makes them accomplices. Unless the bloke you're working with is offering himself up as propaganda fodder in such a way, then this is the main difference.

[CFS]

Is the bloke you're working with putting on blinkers and offering himself up as a tool to be used to expedite the politics of a despotic regime that butchers and mutilates women and children? I know Britain is rounding up illegal immigrants and housing them in terrible places in pursuit of some paranoid nationalistic island-mentality politics that the morons in charge of the country think is what the people actually want, but as bad as UK govt is, the Saudis are actually shooting their immigrants dead in the mountains. Women and children shot to pieces, blown up and torn in half, strewn across the mountains. And those women and children who make it to detention centres alive are often raped. This has all been reported by Human Rights Watch. This is the ugly face of Saudi Arabia the government is desperate to hide with an ornate mask, a mask bejewelled with globally-reputable sports and entertainment. This is what Henderson is contributing to. No matter how much he and others want to distance their conscience from it by playing ignorant, their active participation in something that exists purely to scrub up a stain on that country's global reputation makes them accomplices. Unless the bloke you're working with is offering himself up as propaganda fodder in such a way, then this is the main difference.

I find all that hard to believe and i can see why players are going there. No country is perfect we as a country have no right pointing fingers. You would go there if you work and someone tripled your wage if you didn't your just dumb lol.

[JohnMcGreal]

You’d be hard pressed to find many people truthfully say they wouldn’t do something they love doing for a couple of years and they got a stupid amount of money for doing it.

We’ll never be in that position but if we were, no doubt we’d be making sure the air con was on ready for our arrival to the mansion we’d just been given.

Was his £200,000+ per week salary at Liverpool not already a stupid amount of money for something he loved doing?

He's been earning north of £10 million a year for a good number of years.

It's nothing more than naked greed. That isn't surprising in itself. What is surprising is how quickly a very rich man abandoned his principles to earn even more money that he almost certainly doesn't even need.

[claretfern]

I noticed our ex-loan player, Georges-Kevin Nkoudou, scored yesterday for Damak.
Presumably making more than decent living playing out there....

[CoolClaret]

Was his £200,000+ per week salary at Liverpool not already a stupid amount of money for something he loved doing?

He's been earning north of £10 million a year for a good number of years.

It's nothing more than naked greed. That isn't surprising in itself. What is surprising is how quickly a very rich man abandoned his principles to earn even more money that he almost certainly doesn't even need.

I think what’s surprising is how the attitude of people in this country has been radically shifted - probably from an unchecked gutter press, dross TV and years of Tory government just dragging people down.

I wasn’t alive back in the 50s-70s but I feel like we’d have more societal condemnation then rather than the attitude of ‘do what’s best for you and your family, f**k everything/everyone else’

[No Ney Never]

History, Tribalism, Passion & Atmosphere are just 4 things that make European football leagues, particularly the Premier league, so attractive to a global tv audience.
Saudi football cannot buy this no matter how much money they throw at the best players, these things need to grow over time and requires the people of Saudi Arabia to take part.

[Spiral]

I find all that hard to believe and i can see why players are going there. No country is perfect we as a country have no right pointing fingers. You would go there if you work and someone tripled your wage if you didn't your just dumb lol.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/21/sau ... men-border

If you disbelieve Human Rights Watch and instead believe a fantasy you might create in your mind that HRW is making this up and that the Saudis are not so abhorrent as reported, it tells me you're one of those people who would happily apply the blinkers to give yourself a nice life, which tells me a lot about you as a person. I could probably triple my income selling drugs or pimping women, and you know what, I'm probably just dumb lol for not doing that. I feel everything needs spelling out on this forum, so in case you missed the meaning of the metaphor, the point is that you can earn loads of money doing abhorrent things or working as accomplices for abhorrent people, but that doesn't make it right. If you value ostentatious wealth over your moral compass (let's be clear, the people the Saudis are enticing to play in their league are already millionaires, making this level of wealth most definitely "ostentatious"), then that says a lot about you as a person.

[Sproggy]

Was his £200,000+ per week salary at Liverpool not already a stupid amount of money for something he loved doing?

He's been earning north of £10 million a year for a good number of years.

It's nothing more than naked greed. That isn't surprising in itself. What is surprising is how quickly a very rich man abandoned his principles to earn even more money that he almost certainly doesn't even need.

He didn't have any principles. He had a media team telling him which principles they were pretending he had on any particular day.

[rufus lumley]

I have been following a muck cart this morning as I thought it was wedding.

[ŽižkovClaret]

Is that really something to aspire to though? Knowing the future generations of your family are going to grow up spoilt and never have to live in the real world?
And is living in Saudi really an "experience"? The lads seeing out their careers in America have got the right idea.

I remember some celeb once, can't remember who, stated that he wouldn't just give his kids handouts, but would apply a 3x multiplier to whatever his kids earned. so they could pursue whatever they wanted in terms of a "real" job, obviously with housing and education costs likely covered, but not just be some obnoxious made in Chelsea types.

Reckon he had it about right there tbh

[jrgbfc]

Interesting that this has been bumped. I wonder if Jordan Henderson is regretting his decision now? Zero sympathy for him from me.

[ŽižkovClaret]

Interesting that this has been bumped. I wonder if Jordan Henderson is regretting his decision now? Zero sympathy for him from me.

Our survey says, f**k him

[clarets1978]

I was hoping this was bumped saying it had fell flat on its face and was being disbanded.... however unlikely given the Saudi money involved

[KellyClaret]

A young player needs challenging matches to hone skills and stay sharp, which are crucial for long-term career progression and for maintaining visibility in the eyes of national team selectors.

For those following specific players or teams in the Saudi League, such as Al-Ettifaq and Al-Hazm, the cronología de al-ettifaq contra al-hazm can offer insight into player performances and the level of competition.

Is this some sort of AI or spam (or both!)?

[SydneyClaret]

A couple of the teams in Saudi are huge, such as Al Hilal. I’ll never forget the AFC Champions league final agains my Aussie team WSW. They lost to some dubious refereeing decisions and a hell of a lot of heart. At the time it was like watching a Championship side against a League 2. It was a full national stadium with about 100 WSW fans.

The only way they would get a UEFA place would be if they joined UEFA (and I wouldn’t put it past UEFA to accept their money) but this would mean giving up their all but guaranteed World Cup place.

For what it’s worth the ‘sports washing’ is kind of working. Things are slowly changing there under their younger more modern king who wants to open up his country to world trade. It’s truly a great place to visit if you’re not a drinker.

[Rileybobs]

It’s truly a great place to visit if you’re not a drinker.

Or gay…

[jrgbfc]

A couple of the teams in Saudi are huge, such as Al Hilal. I’ll never forget the AFC Champions league final agains my Aussie team WSW. They lost to some dubious refereeing decisions and a hell of a lot of heart. At the time it was like watching a Championship side against a League 2. It was a full national stadium with about 100 WSW fans.

The only way they would get a UEFA place would be if they joined UEFA (and I wouldn’t put it past UEFA to accept their money) but this would mean giving up their all but guaranteed World Cup place.

For what it’s worth the ‘sports washing’ is kind of working. Things are slowly changing there under their younger more modern king who wants to open up his country to world trade. It’s truly a great place to visit if you’re not a drinker.

I don't wish to sound ignorant but what is there to actually do there? Of all the great places in the world i reckon Saudi would be somewhere near the bottom of places i'd like to visit.

[Enola Gay]

Or gay…

Or a journalist.

[Sproggy]

...or critical of islam, or a woman, or ethiopian, or a migrant worker, or an advocate of human rights.

[Rileybobs]

But other than all of those things it’s a cracking little place.

[fatboy47]

But other than all of those things it’s a cracking little place.

Apart from the scenery.

Obviously.

[Rileybobs]

Apart from the scenery.

Obviously.

and oppressive climate.

[Swizzlestick]

Can we get Spiral back please?

[SydneyClaret]

I don't wish to sound ignorant but what is there to actually do there? Of all the great places in the world i reckon Saudi would be somewhere near the bottom of places i'd like to visit.

Scuba diving is world class. Scenery and ancient temples. That’s about it really. Jeddah and Ridyah are quite modern. Like everywhere though the media have their say and it’s honestly not as bad as it’s made out.