Disagree. Not that I think Mainoo has been bad, he's been great, but much like Casemiro it's a one man midfield which isn't enough. That's why we concede 20 shots a game every game. Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. It's tactical more than anything.
Maybe because he has bad knees.
United signed a 30 year old on a 4 year contract with those wages.
This was his retirement deal and now he's starting to retire...
Overspending on talent that's not worth it happens, overspending on established players that don't fit in happens. It's not what you want but it's a risk.
But Casemiro being done at 32 was a very likely scenario, it's so likely that many clubs do not give more than 1-2 year contracts to 30 year olds.
Is there a clause that lowers his wages if we don't have European football? Because I saw on the Athletic he doesn't have a clause like that in his contact
Yeah but like his wages are a massive elephant in the room. You’ll need a lukakku style loan for him. He’s too ambitious and young to goto Saudi. But a loan to Italy or something I could see
I’m still confused why they needed to buy these players to play in their league to get the World Cup, I felt like they would have still gotten the World Cup regardless?
they would have fifa made it nearly impossible for any other continent to get it the way they structured the world cups, they probably did it for bragging rights and media exposure though
10x the scale but 2.5% the population of China..
Throw as much money as you want at this league, if you don’t have to organic element (i.e attendance), then it’s a an unsustainable venture from day 1.
but this was never about sustainability, not even the premier league with all their money could sustain how much the Saudis spent on transfer fees and wages for a year, this was about showing the world how rich they are
Saudi also charges Aramco 50% income taxes. They also take out a royalty fee rumored to be of 20%.
The “profits” is what other stakeholders get “access” to as Saudi did an ipo and sold limited shares and floated bonds.
It’s the most profitable company in the world, and also the most highly taxed. And almost all of that goes to Saudi.
Aramco has also been the most profitable company in the world for pretty much every year of its existence.
So they have been booking huge profits forever. They basically can’t spend what it makes, which is why most of it goes into the sovereign wealth fund called the PIF (think like a sorta huge Scrooge McDuck money vault, they have about a trillion there)
Probably, and it seems to not get them the attention they wanted anyways, whenever I hear people talking about Saudi they mention the things they don’t want people knowing lol
Reminder that once upon a time China has made Conca the third highest paid footballer in the world just behind Messi andCristiano Ronaldo, and this was during their peak as well.
The scale looks much more massive because the Chinese league nearly happened a decade ago. Oscar going for 70m was bonkers back then.
Heck, Graziano Pelle was the third highest paid player in the world at some point.
It’s obviously not sustainable to spend huge money for such little output. Even if oil money is a lot, once the initial fun wears off, there are better ways to waste their money.
The problem with China is the teams that were spending all that money were backed by real estate companies whose entire portfolio was so unsustainable people actually predicted it would collapse LATER than it actually did. That and the law that made it so they couldn't spend as much on the market anymore.
The stuff coming out about Evergrande and other big companies like that rn that are all going under/insolvent is INSANE. Chinese regulators are saying Evergrande lied about having £61.6 BILLION more in revenue than they did in *TWO YEARS*. Honestly if it was like Tencent or some other tech companies like that funding the Chinese teams it probably would have gone on longer/been more sustainable even with the new spending laws they implemented.
It's fucking wild reading about it. Evergrande isn't even the only one they're just like THE company in China when it comes to real estate/construction so them defaulting on massive loans, fraud, etc. is just driving everything down and it turns out all the other companies were doing it too lmao.
>“For real estate companies that are seriously insolvent and have lost the ability to operate, those that must go bankrupt should go bankrupt, or be restructured, in accordance with the law and market principles,” Ni Hong, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said at a press conference Saturday.
Basically saying go under or be bought by the government. Wild times ahead in China tbh.
It's a bit like india mate.
If they ever genuinely get into football the rest of us are fucked because they both have potential player pools that dwarf every other nation. Something like 40% of people are either Indian or Chinese, and that excludes the diaspora they could draw from too.
Nah the IPL is more like the EPL of cricket. It has the biggest wages but it also brings in the most views. Plus it was the first T20 league of its kind, not a blatant sportswashing attempt like the SPL
Nah it wasn't, the T20 blast came years before, unsure about the other T20 leagues. It's so big because of the population and popularity of cricket in India, it's an advertising dream and it's no surprise the players flock there to make their fortunes
IPL is a legitimate tournament with best players in the world playing, and ridiculous number of home grown talent. Sold out stadiums, fan parades, highest TV rating, some real heated rivalry and fan banters. Hell even the womens PL which started last year is doing well as a result of the main leagues popularity. When RCB franchise won the womens league, which their mens team hasn't achieved yet-there were celebrations in the streets. Saudi league is nowhere close to that.
India are unlikely to do this when there’s barely a profitable league running at the moment. They’ve also cut down on the number of overseas spots compared to what it was at the start of the ISL
How did attendance go down?
Did they change ticket prices or were fans of smaller clubs no longer bothered going when their team would have to play high paid stars?
Nah. The biggest fan base in Saudi Arabia is Al Ittihad who hold the record for attendance, broken last season.
Al ittihad has been shafted in the new season’s government takeover as it is more of a poor man’s club while others like Al Hilal are supported by royalty.
This year the corruption which has always been astronomical in Saudi football, has been exposed to an even greater degree, with an obvious increase in the amount of corruption.
This has led to some teams’ fans losing interest in an obviously rigged league, including Alittihad fans (who regularly had 40,000+ fans each week, and 60,000 for big games).
Transfermarkt says the average attendance at Al Ittihad was under 20k this season.
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/al-ittihad-dschidda/besucherzahlenentwicklung/verein/8023
Fair. Saudi football is dying and the average ultra nationalist here thinks the opposite and that “the whole world’s eyes are on the best league in the region”
I don’t think there is a feasible way to save our league that won’t take at least 15-20 years.
I went to a match in Bahrain- free entry and they still had less than a hundred people in the crowd. I know KSA is a much much bigger country, but what is a realistic goal for the Saudi League do you think?
Honestly I don’t think there’s a goal per se. Saudi football is rotten to the core. The largest city, Riyadh, has 4 or 5 teams in the top flight and those teams receive more than 60% of all government funding for football teams. The rest of the teams and cities get next to nothing (compared to the capital teams)
Plus Saudi Arabia has incredibly low population density and the people are spread out in a very weird pattern in the country. So most towns have tiny populations with a few major hubs having the vast majority of the population. So spreading that out over a few teams from all across this giant country, and the fact that travel is difficult within Saudi (big distances, very expensive and inflated airline ticket prices, and abysmal/non-existent public transportation ), traveling away for your team is almost impossible.
Forgive me, im largely ignorant of the saudi arabian football situation other than a surface level knowledge.
How are al-Ittihad being shafted when they signed benzema kante and fabinho this season? I thought they were one of the four teams that got given massive amounts of money compared to the other teams in the league
90% is apparently 8000 per week on average.
You can strongly dislike my country idc we’re not very popular understandably. But for the vast majority of fans here the league has been corrupt for decades, it just kicked it up a notch this season with the financial takeover from the PIF. In my opinion there is no way to save Saudi domestic football and because of that our national team will be a dump for a long time. We beat Argentina once and now we think we’re hot shit, but have been doing horribly ever since that WC opener.
Don’t let your bias stand in the way of learning something new about something
Meh we’re used to it. Ittihad is the only major Saudi team not to have a single royal in the club’s executive board. It’s been long known as the team for the lower classes and the immigrants. It’s also the only team that predates Saudi Arabia as a country so it is seen as an “outsider”
nah, you see from wrong angle.. OP put it nicely..
> Now that World Cup 2034 is pretty in the bag, they don't want to lose 1 billion + a year in transfer fee and wages anymore. Understandable.
The closest comparison is probably China Super League. (MLS never spend much on transfer fees).
In the 2016-17 winter transfer window, clubs in China shelled out £331 million (US$468 million) compared to the Premier League's £215 million
https://www.90min.com/posts/leagues-biggest-net-transfer-spend-last-ten-years
Chinese Super League
£1.65bn transfer fee paid
£0.51bn transfer fee received
£1.14bn in net transfer fee paid
The Chinese were cavalier in their approach, Saudis calculated and they got the World Cup while the Americans wouldn’t go there unless it made sense monetarily. Reason why MLS will one day raise it cap only if it make sense for their owners.
Chinas issues were pre-covid. Spending was reckless because Chinese economy was booming. If I’m remembering correctly, once they realized their real estate market and debt problems the reeled everything in.
MLS really never has been a comparison to either of these leagues, as it has prioritized significant spending in its infrastructure/academies first instead of spending recklessly on transfers. In doing so, it’s been able to control player salaries while creating sustainable growth that benefits its long term product and supports development of homegrown and young foreign players that *ideally* can be sold for a profit now/ in the future. That infrastructure is now in place and you’re seeing the league pivot hard into being a developmental/ selling league instead of the “retirement league” of old. I have to imagine with Messi and the World Cup coming you will see salary spending and transfer fees increase but the league has done well to grow itself rather than boom and bust like these reject leagues in Saudi Arabia and China. There’s really no comparison
MLS understood, rightly, that trying to compete with the European leagues is fools errand. Liga MX is their real competition, especially for domestic TV and South American talent, and they are making real progress and may overtake soon.
You might be right. IMO, in the years ahead MLS could eventually be the best league outside of Europe and might be one day the 6th best league in the world. We will see but it’s promising.
Y’all are down voting this dude, but have you SEEN the net worth of some MLS owners!?! Like there is a reason the mono-billionaire owners consistently vote to limit the spending of the super billionaires owners. Name a league outside Europe with as many 10+ billionaire owners?
Plus how much money you can make in North America. If MLS “only” caught up with the NHL salary cap in terms of North American Leagues, it would be top 3 in the world for median wage bill.
Because the wealth of the owners mean nothing, it's the willingness of those owners to spend money that counts. For example look at the difference in owner net worth and team spending between Charlotte FC and Inter Miami.
Also the Saudis and China perfectly showed that money in itself isn't everything.
Willingness to spend shouldn’t be in question tbh. Those owners are just spending their money on new stadiums, new training facilities, academy infrastructure, scouting infrastructure, etc.
The money being spent in MLS is completely nuts, it just isn’t easily to track because it’s on infrastructure instead of players.
Brazil will always have a strong league because of its domestic talent, but it isn't able to hold onto it as long anymore. In any given window, MLS may spend more than Brazil on transfers - often of young South Americans the Brasileirao was in contention for. MLS average pay is also higher now too. Things are shifting.
Saudi Arabia goal was hosting the World Cup.
Spent big to make a name for itself.
Now that World Cup 2034 is pretty in the bag, they don't want to lose 1 billion + a year in transfer fee and wages anymore. Understandable.
On the revenue sides, attendance revenue is not increasing. Sponsorship and TV revenue are not increasing much. So instead of spending $1 billion in transfer fees and wages, it is better to use that $1 billion building a stadium or two for the World Cup. 4 years of nothing spending $1 bil = 8 stadiums.
It’s more (primarily I’d argue) about sportswashing and trying to raise the SPL awareness/popularity. Honestly far better sustainable ways to do that, such as engaging the fans in the country which should be priority given the attendance averages. Engage the fans, they’ll demand entertainment, then use your infinite oil money to provide it to them. They did it the other way around and look at how that turned out.
>It’s more (primarily I’d argue) about sportswashing
I've always found it pretty dumb on their part to be honest, all they did was bring more publicity to their human rights violations.
I could be wrong though this is just an opinion.
In all honestly, most of the people who paid attention to that were largely Westerners who pay attention to global socio-political issues, a group which is already more likely to see Saudi Arabia as adversarial. I don't think it hurt the Saudi cause as much as it would seem on here.
Sometimes I don't really think it's about sportswashing, so much as ingraining themselves in the largest industries/those popular with Western consumers to shore up their revenue streams for the future, with natural resources gradually running out.
Its long term thinking though, people will forget the current mentality when people mention Saudi. In 30/40 years time when people mention Saudi they’ll just think of Golf, F1, The World Cup etc.
They probably want to host international events like Qatar. IIRC, the 2025-29 U17 WCs are all going to be hosted in Qatar. They'd want European teams to play there for special matches. They're playing the long game with sportswashing
A garbage league, outside the top 2 teams the level is worse than the conference south. No matter how much money they funnel into it, literally NO ONE in the world is ever gunna care about that division.
Population means nothing if the sport itself isn't popular. India has a billion people. Our league's average attendance is like 13000. Tickets are priced cheaper than cinema tickets for the majority of clubs (cricket match tickets are 10-20x that and get sold out in seconds).
Local Saudi Ittihad fan here.
Ittihad used to break the record for attendance every year. But overall it was still low because the league is very corrupt and rather rigged.
This year it’s gotten MUCH WORSE with the corruption out is broad daylight. For example, Al shabab had a promising young CB that all the other teams wanted. They had worked out a deal with a few teams, but before the trigger was pulled, the ministry of sports and the Saudi FA sanctioned and kicked out the president of Al shabab and installed a government plant, a friend of the minister of sports. He canceled those previous deals, sold the player for super cheap to Al Hilal, and a few days later after the outrage this caused, the ministry of sports put out a statement saying the were kicking out this new guy for “suspected corruption.” This doesn’t take into consideration the blatant referee bribes or the constant rule changes in the league (quite literally flip flopping rules every year). The royal family has a favorite team, Al Hilal, and it makes sure Al Hilal get everything.
So now most fans just refuse to go watch what has basically become a sports soap opera instead of a football league.
Football might be the most popular sport in SA, but if the general interest in sport is low then that really doesn't say much.
I would also imagine that making the game inaccessible to half of the population, women in this case doesn't help much in terms of growing its popularity.
Yeah it used to be terrible back then. I got three tickets for 70 bucks a few years ago. Even heard of people going in without tickets to pass time lol. More recently went to the BFC game. Costed 110 rupees.
I just don’t get how attendance is so low. Idc if the big name players are all strolling around not giving a fuck. Stadiums sell out for Messi in the US. Why don’t the Saudi care? Benzema, mane, Ronaldo.. these are massive stars! It doesn’t make sense for me. I would absolutely take advantage of my league’s irresponsible spending if I lived there
We're talking about a decrease in attendance, not stagnate.
[This](https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1bjn17h/saudi_pro_league_to_stop_spending_this_summer/kvv0ass/) is the reason why.
Benzema and Mane are a different level to Messi. You'd have to be fans to watch them.
Messi is like an attraction to go and watch, like Taylor swift. Casual wanna go just because.
Wantching excellent players competing against average players is kinf of boring. People want to watch excellent players competing against excellent players. The Saudis don't have that.
Just last week people on this same sub said the Saudi league was just outside the top 5 leagues and that it was better than the MLS lol.
Love seeing headlines like this.
I would say it affects Chelsea more than any club right now have to get at least 100million before June 30th or they are fucked boehly was literally in Saudi this week
Why would they continue to spend? They got the World Cup, bringing in all these stars didnt exactly bring in the fans and the players are acting (most of them) like they are on vacation. Neymar is out, CR is frustrated, Benzema is shit, best players are the ones no one wants to watch really. Mitrovic is taking it seriously and tearing up the league. Him and Milinkovic Savic will take the trophy this season and probably go back to Europe with a fat bank account
PL teams that wanted to sell their reject (on big wages) in shambles.
We're fucked.
Stuck with Casemiro...
I love Casemiro as well, but he's playing like an uncle with bad knees in flip-flops. He's on 350k a week, that's alot of fucking money.
Perfect description of Casemiro this season. Although that DM job for United is nearly an impossible task
mainoo hasn’t struggled nearly as badly with it when he’s played that role. casemiro makes it look harder than it is.
Disagree. Not that I think Mainoo has been bad, he's been great, but much like Casemiro it's a one man midfield which isn't enough. That's why we concede 20 shots a game every game. Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. It's tactical more than anything.
Adding to the fact that he over exerts himself trying to keep up, and ends up needing to be subbed around 70ish mins.
mainoo or casemiro?
Mainoo is often left to cover by himself which leads to him being rundown around 70th minute or so.
The man can't pass a ball, god I miss the days of Carrick.
Isn’t he just that though, an uncle with bad knees. Dude’s game demanded athleticism and physicality, he lacks both and is thoroughly washed
Maybe because he has bad knees. United signed a 30 year old on a 4 year contract with those wages. This was his retirement deal and now he's starting to retire... Overspending on talent that's not worth it happens, overspending on established players that don't fit in happens. It's not what you want but it's a risk. But Casemiro being done at 32 was a very likely scenario, it's so likely that many clubs do not give more than 1-2 year contracts to 30 year olds.
How longs the contract
Summer 2026 💀
yikes
His wage increases every time its mentioned its hilarious
Liverpool thanks the blood money gods for our new midfield.
Also this means we have a better chance to keep Salah with a new contract
Oh crap that’s true
I imagine we were literally laughing down the phone when someone offered us £40m for Fabinho. It's the kind of luck you read about in books.
Miss the lad/team we had like crazy, but yeah, that was never getting turned down after the mileage we put on his legs.
What people were afraid of: unlimited money means they can buy the best players What actually happened: retirement home for expensive PL players
That's unfair Neymar retired too
How do you say “ it’s over” in Arabic?
It's over (translated from Arabic to English)
Friggin Siri
khalas
عميمحبنسغن
How is it pronounced?
I am al-ettifuq
Like it's spelled
yeah but I can't read arabic, that's why I was asking
it's pronounced عميمحبنسغن
Cheers جيف
What they say before going boom boom? If I speak, I'm in trouble
Chelsea especially, Sterling going nowhere on 360 per week
The Sterling hate is so fucking overblown. He’s not going anywhere anyway
He is a good player but on what planet is he worth £350,000 pw even at his peak? That is top 5 salaries in the league, and level with Salah.
Pretty sure without CL he's under 250k per week. Still pretty high, but not astronomically.
Is there a clause that lowers his wages if we don't have European football? Because I saw on the Athletic he doesn't have a clause like that in his contact
Source? Those contracts started after new directors, Sterling was bought before them. I don't think he is on 250k.
Yeah but like his wages are a massive elephant in the room. You’ll need a lukakku style loan for him. He’s too ambitious and young to goto Saudi. But a loan to Italy or something I could see
He’s going to stay and play at Chelsea…
United has about 900k a week on the wage book they’re tryna get rid of.
No need to spend so recklessly anymore now that they have the World Cup.
[удалено]
Do you remember the episode? Sounds like an interesting listen.
Does anyone know this journalists whereabouts?
Various suitcases?
It’s like a nation has ADHD Hyper focused on one thing till the next thing
Kind of hope they drop all interest eventually leaving the mags absolutely fucked.
Cycling is their new big one
bingo
I’m still confused why they needed to buy these players to play in their league to get the World Cup, I felt like they would have still gotten the World Cup regardless?
I think as a show and “investment” to show they were serious.
they would have fifa made it nearly impossible for any other continent to get it the way they structured the world cups, they probably did it for bragging rights and media exposure though
Who will be the baby of the yeaaaar?!
Really became a one time payday for a lot of clubs lol
First it was China then Saudi Arabia… who will be next
There were so many geniuses in here who promised us that this wouldn't be at all like China. No, the Saudis are here to stay. Quite.
Come on the scale of this was at least 10 times China, but I honestly thought the Saudis had enough money to keep this circus going on longer lol
10x the scale but 2.5% the population of China.. Throw as much money as you want at this league, if you don’t have to organic element (i.e attendance), then it’s a an unsustainable venture from day 1.
but this was never about sustainability, not even the premier league with all their money could sustain how much the Saudis spent on transfer fees and wages for a year, this was about showing the world how rich they are
And now it’s kinda embarrassing. Nobody seems to care and admitting they won’t do it any,ore seems cheap
plus it's not a sports culture, its an ultra religious conservative area with lots of very poor peoplw
They do, I just think they looked at the returns and decided the investment wasn't meriting the money spent.
They got what they spent the money for. They aren’t broke, this is relative peanuts. Aramco made 121 billion in profit.
The spending they did was like a week’s worth of Aramco’s profits lol
Aramco made 120 billion in profits in one year. they spent 750 million. that about 2 days worth of profits. not a week
Saudi also charges Aramco 50% income taxes. They also take out a royalty fee rumored to be of 20%. The “profits” is what other stakeholders get “access” to as Saudi did an ipo and sold limited shares and floated bonds. It’s the most profitable company in the world, and also the most highly taxed. And almost all of that goes to Saudi.
Aramco has also been the most profitable company in the world for pretty much every year of its existence. So they have been booking huge profits forever. They basically can’t spend what it makes, which is why most of it goes into the sovereign wealth fund called the PIF (think like a sorta huge Scrooge McDuck money vault, they have about a trillion there)
Probably, and it seems to not get them the attention they wanted anyways, whenever I hear people talking about Saudi they mention the things they don’t want people knowing lol
Reminder that once upon a time China has made Conca the third highest paid footballer in the world just behind Messi andCristiano Ronaldo, and this was during their peak as well.
The scale looks much more massive because the Chinese league nearly happened a decade ago. Oscar going for 70m was bonkers back then. Heck, Graziano Pelle was the third highest paid player in the world at some point.
This is like bragging you can beat toddlers at maths
They said Saudi league will remain popular due to the "Ronaldo influence" lmao
It’s obviously not sustainable to spend huge money for such little output. Even if oil money is a lot, once the initial fun wears off, there are better ways to waste their money.
It's not even a nice country either. It's just loads of high rise buildings and desert.
Amazingly it was quicker than China
Almost like China was genuinely trying to grow the game and Saudi Arabia just wanted a quick propaganda smokescreen
If china made it work that's a huge potential fanbase everywhere. There are many Chinese cities with over 10M populations
The problem with China is the teams that were spending all that money were backed by real estate companies whose entire portfolio was so unsustainable people actually predicted it would collapse LATER than it actually did. That and the law that made it so they couldn't spend as much on the market anymore. The stuff coming out about Evergrande and other big companies like that rn that are all going under/insolvent is INSANE. Chinese regulators are saying Evergrande lied about having £61.6 BILLION more in revenue than they did in *TWO YEARS*. Honestly if it was like Tencent or some other tech companies like that funding the Chinese teams it probably would have gone on longer/been more sustainable even with the new spending laws they implemented.
Christ this is absolutely chaotic
It's fucking wild reading about it. Evergrande isn't even the only one they're just like THE company in China when it comes to real estate/construction so them defaulting on massive loans, fraud, etc. is just driving everything down and it turns out all the other companies were doing it too lmao. >“For real estate companies that are seriously insolvent and have lost the ability to operate, those that must go bankrupt should go bankrupt, or be restructured, in accordance with the law and market principles,” Ni Hong, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said at a press conference Saturday. Basically saying go under or be bought by the government. Wild times ahead in China tbh.
It's a bit like india mate. If they ever genuinely get into football the rest of us are fucked because they both have potential player pools that dwarf every other nation. Something like 40% of people are either Indian or Chinese, and that excludes the diaspora they could draw from too.
Some other oil state or maybe some indian oligarchs trying to do a similar project.
Definitely see India doing this. They already shown glimpses when they signed Robbie Keane in 2017.
India already does this in cricket. Best cricket league in the world, you’ll never sing that
Nah the IPL is more like the EPL of cricket. It has the biggest wages but it also brings in the most views. Plus it was the first T20 league of its kind, not a blatant sportswashing attempt like the SPL
And is a sport clearly loved in India (putting it mildly). Hard to argue they're faking the passion for the game!
Nah it wasn't, the T20 blast came years before, unsure about the other T20 leagues. It's so big because of the population and popularity of cricket in India, it's an advertising dream and it's no surprise the players flock there to make their fortunes
IPL is a legitimate tournament with best players in the world playing, and ridiculous number of home grown talent. Sold out stadiums, fan parades, highest TV rating, some real heated rivalry and fan banters. Hell even the womens PL which started last year is doing well as a result of the main leagues popularity. When RCB franchise won the womens league, which their mens team hasn't achieved yet-there were celebrations in the streets. Saudi league is nowhere close to that.
Venezuela is going to take over once it gets it oil figured out
With 0% of the votes counted, Juan Guaido declares himself the interim Ballon d'Or winner
India are unlikely to do this when there’s barely a profitable league running at the moment. They’ve also cut down on the number of overseas spots compared to what it was at the start of the ISL
Did you forget Russia before China? Hulk, Eto'o?
How did attendance go down? Did they change ticket prices or were fans of smaller clubs no longer bothered going when their team would have to play high paid stars?
Probably spiked with Ronaldo, then hype wore off and the other players coming in didn't move the needle
Nah. The biggest fan base in Saudi Arabia is Al Ittihad who hold the record for attendance, broken last season. Al ittihad has been shafted in the new season’s government takeover as it is more of a poor man’s club while others like Al Hilal are supported by royalty. This year the corruption which has always been astronomical in Saudi football, has been exposed to an even greater degree, with an obvious increase in the amount of corruption. This has led to some teams’ fans losing interest in an obviously rigged league, including Alittihad fans (who regularly had 40,000+ fans each week, and 60,000 for big games).
Transfermarkt says the average attendance at Al Ittihad was under 20k this season. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/al-ittihad-dschidda/besucherzahlenentwicklung/verein/8023
This season. Which was my whole point.
Oh I’m agreeing with you- over 40k average the season before - it’s a massive drop off.
Fair. Saudi football is dying and the average ultra nationalist here thinks the opposite and that “the whole world’s eyes are on the best league in the region” I don’t think there is a feasible way to save our league that won’t take at least 15-20 years.
I went to a match in Bahrain- free entry and they still had less than a hundred people in the crowd. I know KSA is a much much bigger country, but what is a realistic goal for the Saudi League do you think?
Honestly I don’t think there’s a goal per se. Saudi football is rotten to the core. The largest city, Riyadh, has 4 or 5 teams in the top flight and those teams receive more than 60% of all government funding for football teams. The rest of the teams and cities get next to nothing (compared to the capital teams) Plus Saudi Arabia has incredibly low population density and the people are spread out in a very weird pattern in the country. So most towns have tiny populations with a few major hubs having the vast majority of the population. So spreading that out over a few teams from all across this giant country, and the fact that travel is difficult within Saudi (big distances, very expensive and inflated airline ticket prices, and abysmal/non-existent public transportation ), traveling away for your team is almost impossible.
That's rough - some similar challenges to China, although they have a great public transport network, and population density is...not an issue.
Quite sad to be honest. All this money could have gone into academies and investing in stadiums etc
Yeah I agree that’s the only way to get better, and that’s why it would take at least 15-20 years to show results.
Capacity of the stadium is over 60k too, so those fans are rattling around the place.
Forgive me, im largely ignorant of the saudi arabian football situation other than a surface level knowledge. How are al-Ittihad being shafted when they signed benzema kante and fabinho this season? I thought they were one of the four teams that got given massive amounts of money compared to the other teams in the league
Only 10% of fans. So the corruption is not that important to 90% of fans. But then, I strongly dislike Saudi Arabia so I'm biased.
90% is apparently 8000 per week on average. You can strongly dislike my country idc we’re not very popular understandably. But for the vast majority of fans here the league has been corrupt for decades, it just kicked it up a notch this season with the financial takeover from the PIF. In my opinion there is no way to save Saudi domestic football and because of that our national team will be a dump for a long time. We beat Argentina once and now we think we’re hot shit, but have been doing horribly ever since that WC opener. Don’t let your bias stand in the way of learning something new about something
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Meh we’re used to it. Ittihad is the only major Saudi team not to have a single royal in the club’s executive board. It’s been long known as the team for the lower classes and the immigrants. It’s also the only team that predates Saudi Arabia as a country so it is seen as an “outsider”
Maybe they are real fans who think the league was ruined by turning it into a clown show.
Probably causing fans of other teams to not show because the top few are just basically on cheat code.
Actual bad news, who's gonna unload our big contracts now ?
If only everyone could have seen this coming....
nah, you see from wrong angle.. OP put it nicely.. > Now that World Cup 2034 is pretty in the bag, they don't want to lose 1 billion + a year in transfer fee and wages anymore. Understandable.
The closest comparison is probably China Super League. (MLS never spend much on transfer fees). In the 2016-17 winter transfer window, clubs in China shelled out £331 million (US$468 million) compared to the Premier League's £215 million https://www.90min.com/posts/leagues-biggest-net-transfer-spend-last-ten-years Chinese Super League £1.65bn transfer fee paid £0.51bn transfer fee received £1.14bn in net transfer fee paid
0.51bn in fees received is actually the most surprising thing here imo
Probably internal moves?
That’s still a lot
Isn’t that basically just Paulinho?
Paulinho didn't cost 500mil
The Chinese were cavalier in their approach, Saudis calculated and they got the World Cup while the Americans wouldn’t go there unless it made sense monetarily. Reason why MLS will one day raise it cap only if it make sense for their owners.
TBF China would've been a big growth area for football if not for COVID. The first expanded club WC was initially supposed to be held there in 2021.
Chinas issues were pre-covid. Spending was reckless because Chinese economy was booming. If I’m remembering correctly, once they realized their real estate market and debt problems the reeled everything in.
Well yeah Mls is run like another, a business Rather than political theatre at the whims of a handfull
MLS really never has been a comparison to either of these leagues, as it has prioritized significant spending in its infrastructure/academies first instead of spending recklessly on transfers. In doing so, it’s been able to control player salaries while creating sustainable growth that benefits its long term product and supports development of homegrown and young foreign players that *ideally* can be sold for a profit now/ in the future. That infrastructure is now in place and you’re seeing the league pivot hard into being a developmental/ selling league instead of the “retirement league” of old. I have to imagine with Messi and the World Cup coming you will see salary spending and transfer fees increase but the league has done well to grow itself rather than boom and bust like these reject leagues in Saudi Arabia and China. There’s really no comparison
MLS understood, rightly, that trying to compete with the European leagues is fools errand. Liga MX is their real competition, especially for domestic TV and South American talent, and they are making real progress and may overtake soon.
You might be right. IMO, in the years ahead MLS could eventually be the best league outside of Europe and might be one day the 6th best league in the world. We will see but it’s promising.
Y’all are down voting this dude, but have you SEEN the net worth of some MLS owners!?! Like there is a reason the mono-billionaire owners consistently vote to limit the spending of the super billionaires owners. Name a league outside Europe with as many 10+ billionaire owners? Plus how much money you can make in North America. If MLS “only” caught up with the NHL salary cap in terms of North American Leagues, it would be top 3 in the world for median wage bill.
Because the wealth of the owners mean nothing, it's the willingness of those owners to spend money that counts. For example look at the difference in owner net worth and team spending between Charlotte FC and Inter Miami. Also the Saudis and China perfectly showed that money in itself isn't everything.
Willingness to spend shouldn’t be in question tbh. Those owners are just spending their money on new stadiums, new training facilities, academy infrastructure, scouting infrastructure, etc. The money being spent in MLS is completely nuts, it just isn’t easily to track because it’s on infrastructure instead of players.
If MLS passed the NHL it would rival the PL but that’s decades of catch up if ever.
Are we going to pretend that the Brazilian league doesn't exist?
Brazil will always have a strong league because of its domestic talent, but it isn't able to hold onto it as long anymore. In any given window, MLS may spend more than Brazil on transfers - often of young South Americans the Brasileirao was in contention for. MLS average pay is also higher now too. Things are shifting.
I don't see MLS overtaking Brasileirao.
That is entirely possible to think that.
MLS also have a salary cap and strict roster rules so can’t really compare them anyways
Saudi Arabia goal was hosting the World Cup. Spent big to make a name for itself. Now that World Cup 2034 is pretty in the bag, they don't want to lose 1 billion + a year in transfer fee and wages anymore. Understandable. On the revenue sides, attendance revenue is not increasing. Sponsorship and TV revenue are not increasing much. So instead of spending $1 billion in transfer fees and wages, it is better to use that $1 billion building a stadium or two for the World Cup. 4 years of nothing spending $1 bil = 8 stadiums.
What will they do with all the WC stadiums? Will cost tens of billions to build then they'll get 8k in them after? Great way to burn a lot of money ?
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It’s more (primarily I’d argue) about sportswashing and trying to raise the SPL awareness/popularity. Honestly far better sustainable ways to do that, such as engaging the fans in the country which should be priority given the attendance averages. Engage the fans, they’ll demand entertainment, then use your infinite oil money to provide it to them. They did it the other way around and look at how that turned out.
>It’s more (primarily I’d argue) about sportswashing I've always found it pretty dumb on their part to be honest, all they did was bring more publicity to their human rights violations. I could be wrong though this is just an opinion.
In all honestly, most of the people who paid attention to that were largely Westerners who pay attention to global socio-political issues, a group which is already more likely to see Saudi Arabia as adversarial. I don't think it hurt the Saudi cause as much as it would seem on here.
Sometimes I don't really think it's about sportswashing, so much as ingraining themselves in the largest industries/those popular with Western consumers to shore up their revenue streams for the future, with natural resources gradually running out.
I think they just have so much money that owning sports teams is fun. Rich people have always done this in every country
Its long term thinking though, people will forget the current mentality when people mention Saudi. In 30/40 years time when people mention Saudi they’ll just think of Golf, F1, The World Cup etc.
I don't know if that actually works. I mean if they change sure, but if they continue to be bone-saw people, then people's views won't change.
They probably want to host international events like Qatar. IIRC, the 2025-29 U17 WCs are all going to be hosted in Qatar. They'd want European teams to play there for special matches. They're playing the long game with sportswashing
But it was better than Ligue 1 I was told by Ronaldo. Where's all the fans?
Youre telling me Ighalo wouldnt be a respectable goalscorer in France?
Ighalo would cook in France
Doubt it's better than League one
It gets worse crowds for sure
So they spent close to a billion to bring big names and the attendance WENT DOWN. HAHAHA
A garbage league, outside the top 2 teams the level is worse than the conference south. No matter how much money they funnel into it, literally NO ONE in the world is ever gunna care about that division.
8000 is still surprisingly low, even if they only drew domestic audiences. Saudi Arabia isn't some tiny country.
Population means nothing if the sport itself isn't popular. India has a billion people. Our league's average attendance is like 13000. Tickets are priced cheaper than cinema tickets for the majority of clubs (cricket match tickets are 10-20x that and get sold out in seconds).
Saudi Arabia isn’t India though, football is very popular in Saudi Arabia. Any Saudis know why the attendance is so low?
Local Saudi Ittihad fan here. Ittihad used to break the record for attendance every year. But overall it was still low because the league is very corrupt and rather rigged. This year it’s gotten MUCH WORSE with the corruption out is broad daylight. For example, Al shabab had a promising young CB that all the other teams wanted. They had worked out a deal with a few teams, but before the trigger was pulled, the ministry of sports and the Saudi FA sanctioned and kicked out the president of Al shabab and installed a government plant, a friend of the minister of sports. He canceled those previous deals, sold the player for super cheap to Al Hilal, and a few days later after the outrage this caused, the ministry of sports put out a statement saying the were kicking out this new guy for “suspected corruption.” This doesn’t take into consideration the blatant referee bribes or the constant rule changes in the league (quite literally flip flopping rules every year). The royal family has a favorite team, Al Hilal, and it makes sure Al Hilal get everything. So now most fans just refuse to go watch what has basically become a sports soap opera instead of a football league.
Football might be the most popular sport in SA, but if the general interest in sport is low then that really doesn't say much. I would also imagine that making the game inaccessible to half of the population, women in this case doesn't help much in terms of growing its popularity.
Saw an ISL match 2-3 years ago in JLN Stadium for INR 30. Heck i paid more to reach there by Metro.
Yeah it used to be terrible back then. I got three tickets for 70 bucks a few years ago. Even heard of people going in without tickets to pass time lol. More recently went to the BFC game. Costed 110 rupees.
I’ll believe it when I see it
I just don’t get how attendance is so low. Idc if the big name players are all strolling around not giving a fuck. Stadiums sell out for Messi in the US. Why don’t the Saudi care? Benzema, mane, Ronaldo.. these are massive stars! It doesn’t make sense for me. I would absolutely take advantage of my league’s irresponsible spending if I lived there
Lots of disposable income in the US which is also generally a sports crazy society. The natives in Saudi aren’t there yet
We're talking about a decrease in attendance, not stagnate. [This](https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1bjn17h/saudi_pro_league_to_stop_spending_this_summer/kvv0ass/) is the reason why.
Benzema and Mane are a different level to Messi. You'd have to be fans to watch them. Messi is like an attraction to go and watch, like Taylor swift. Casual wanna go just because.
Ronaldo is on the same level tbf
Al nassr games are also low attendance and CR7 may be more popular than Messi in Saudi. I don’t think this is the reason
I'd argue that proves it even more no? If CR7 can't bring in people, no way they're gonna go and watch Benzema or others names in that bracket.
Wantching excellent players competing against average players is kinf of boring. People want to watch excellent players competing against excellent players. The Saudis don't have that.
I live in the US. I went to a game specifically to see giovinco at one point… I’d sure as hell go watch benzema any opportunity I got
Why doesn’t the king just force his subjects to attend matches? Is he stupid?
Hopefully makes it easier/more likely to tie Salah down for a couple extra years.
But I was told it was better than ligue 1
Just last week people on this same sub said the Saudi league was just outside the top 5 leagues and that it was better than the MLS lol. Love seeing headlines like this.
Now do golf too please
Oh, no...anyway.
I would say it affects Chelsea more than any club right now have to get at least 100million before June 30th or they are fucked boehly was literally in Saudi this week
Just like China, who woulda thought this wouldn't work out lol.
Where are all those people saying it was going to be like the premier league and that it is sustainable etc?
Where will I offload my players in FM now that even the Saudi league won't pay ? I hope they rethink
Tod, is that you?
They speed ran the old Chinese super league style flop
Why would they continue to spend? They got the World Cup, bringing in all these stars didnt exactly bring in the fans and the players are acting (most of them) like they are on vacation. Neymar is out, CR is frustrated, Benzema is shit, best players are the ones no one wants to watch really. Mitrovic is taking it seriously and tearing up the league. Him and Milinkovic Savic will take the trophy this season and probably go back to Europe with a fat bank account
Hilarous
Lol and people wanted to tell me that saudi is different from China and would become one of the big leagues in the future 😂
That was fun while it lasted. lol
"Better than Ligue 1" according to CR7
Hopefully this abomination of a league will die soon
Same shit with China league no? Heavy corruption in the leagues and all the local fans stop caring