The Saudi Pro League has just entered its mid-season break period on Saturday evening, an opportunity to take stock after a year spent attracting world football stars.
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The elimination of Al-Ittihad in the second round of the Club World Cup against an Egyptian club, the triumphant welcome of Cristiano Ronaldo during a trip to Iran… Rare are the striking images of Saudi football since the start of the season and the most notable were captured outside the framework of the Saudi Pro League. Four months after massive investments in the summer transfer window ($957 million according to Deloitte), only Neymar’s injury – in selection – and criticism linked to Karim Benzema’s level of play have reached the ears of the general public In France.
The halfway point of the season has just passed. Al-Hilal, the club which recruited Neymar this summer, is currently flying over the championship with no defeat in 18 matchesonly nine goals conceded and a seven-point lead over runner-up Al-Nassr, Cristiano Ronaldo’s club. The five-time Portuguese Ballon d’Or is doing well as he prepares to celebrate his 39th birthday. He is currently the top scorer and top assist player in the Saudi Pro League (19 goals, 9 assists). Karim Benzema cannot say the same. The Frenchman disappoints with only nine goals in 15 matches and his Al-Ittihad team, although the title holder, is only 6th, 22 points behind the leader.
Sometimes embarrassing crowds
In the stadiums, the crowds are quite uneven. Some stadiums appear full like that of Al-Nassr, with an occupancy rate of 81.2% (on average 20,308 people for 25,000 places). But it happens that certain posters attract fewer than 700 spectators, such as during the match between Al-Riyad and Al-Ettifaq (696 people). Above all, the three large stadiums of the championship, those whose capacity exceeds 60,000 seats (Al-Ahli, Al-Ittihad, Al-Hilal), are on average one-third full according to the specialist site Transfermarkt. Even though Hervé Renard insisted that Saudi Arabia was “a great football country” when he was the coach during the last World Cup, these figures are quite disappointing.
Regarding the audiences for Saudi football in France, Canal+ does not wish to reveal them. The encrypted channel, which acquired the broadcasting rights last summer, does not broadcast all the matches and does not (yet) have a dedicated commentator. In addition to this rotation, only around ten match summaries were published on YouTube, with a best audience set at 392,000 views (as of December 28) for the Al-Nassr-Al-Fateh summary. In comparison, the channel is publishing around four highlights per day of the Premier League this season with scores reaching up to 1.8 million views for the Tottenham-Chelsea highlight.
Internationally, it is still difficult to measure the popularity of the Saudi Pro League. For the president of the Spanish Football League, Javier Tebas, “Saudi Arabia must work on the level of its TV rights”. “Nobody watches the Saudi championship in America. Nobody watches it in Africa”, insisted the latter during the Thinking Football Summit in Lisbon in September. Javier Tebas also revealed that the broadcaster of the Saudi Pro League in Spain only had to pay “60,000 euros”. A paltry amount.
Logical beginnings after such a reconstruction
Upon his arrival last August, Neymar asserted, a bit vindictively after the end of his tumultuous adventure with PSG, that the Saudi championship was “perhaps better than Ligue 1”. “I was the first to laugh when Cristiano Ronaldo said at a press conference ‘You’ll see, this championship will become one of the best in the world’. We’re not there yet, but I think they’re achieving what they wanted to do. Football is not at the level of European football but when you are Saudi and you go to the stadium, I think you are satisfied with what you see.”describes François Poulet, who had the opportunity to comment on several matches of the Saudi championship for Canal+.
“The wave of arrivals this summer brought a lot of quality but also instability. Some clubs like Al-Ittihad lost on a collective level”, observes Killian Besson, Asia editor for the Lucarne Opposée site and avid follower of Asian football and the Saudi Pro League since 2016. The latter even notes a disinterest among the club’s supporters, less present at the stadium when the results are not there. Even if the overall level of the championship “improved since September”some stars greatly disappoint, like the Frenchman Allan Saint-Maximin or the Brazilian Roberto Firmino.
“The audience that the Saudi Pro League attracts the most comes from Asia.”
Killian Bessonat franceinfo: sport
This does not prevent the thinking heads of the Saudi Pro League from continuing to think bigger. In December, the sporting director of Saudi football, Michael Emenalo, declared in an interview with Sky Sports that he would be “very happy to welcome Lionel Messi”. “The Saudis have the objective of the 2034 World Cup. They want a high-level championship and full stadiums. But we must not underestimate the level of the matches currently”explains Yvan Le Mée who represents the former Dijon player Julio Tavares, in Saudi Arabia for almost four years and whose Al-Raed club, which plays for maintenance, beat the team of Karim Benzema and N’Golo Kanté on December 23 (3-1).
Competing with the European Top 5, an impossible goal?
According to the agent, the Saudi project does not follow in the same footsteps as China, another country which injected huge sums of money to attract European football stars a few years ago, but whose system had gone bankrupt. The championship is not only intended for pre-retirees looking for incredible salaries either. “Julio Tavares left at 31, at a time when your value is no longer important for the clubs in France. They are in trading mode and want to replenish the coffers to finish with a positive or at least negative balance sheet at the end of the year. There is no such problem when you go to so-called exotic championships.”explains Yvan Le Mée.
“Saudi Arabia is not very far. It is more complicated for a European player to go and play in the United States because of the plane hours and the time difference. Most of the players’ families live in Riyadh where the way of life is very westernized.”
Yvan Le Mée, players agentat franceinfo: sport
To become a very competitive championship, the Saudi Pro League must carry out several projects simultaneously. Four clubs concentrate the majority of the championship’s stars thanks to the Public Investment Fund (PIF). Consideration must be given to the balance between foreign and Saudi players. “The quotas will perhaps increase from eight to ten foreign players. Stars in the short term are very good. But in the long term, you will not be able to continue to line up hundreds of millions in each transfer window. I have the impression that fewer and fewer young people are playing. However, Asian football has shown that training is necessary. For me, there is too much glitter and local journalism does not help. It focuses almost exclusively on the four big clubs”analyzes Killian Besson.
To gauge the development of Saudi football, a major meeting has already been made. The new format of the Club World Cup, which will see the light of day in 2025, will allow four of the best clubs from the Asian confederation to compete against European leaders in a tournament bringing together 32 teams. Yvan Le Mée gets into the game of predictions: “There will be a glass ceiling. Saudi clubs will not replace the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A nor the Bundesliga or even Ligue 1 for that matter. Afterwards, being at the level or doing better than the Netherlands, Belgium or MLS, why not?.