What\u2019s happening?<\/b><\/p>\n
Brazilian football star Neymar made a surprise move to the Saudi Pro League, leaving his Paris Saint-Germain teammates to head for Al Hilal on a near $100 million transfer fee. After failing to win a major European title with PSG and former teammate Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, Neymar is only one of the dozens of football stars who have left the top European leagues and entered the lucrative Saudi signing funnel. How exactly is Saudi Arabia getting all of these top-tier footballers, and why now?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n How it started\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n In January 2023, Cristiano Ronaldo signed a $220 million\/per year contract with Saudi Pro League\u2019s Al Nassr, making him the highest-paid player in world football. The deal emerged as Ronaldo\u2019s former club Manchester United terminated his contract by mutual consent six weeks before, after his bombshell interview with Piers Morgan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At the time, fans ridiculed Ronaldo\u2019s move to such a low-tier league. This made sense, considering the massive success he had enjoyed in his prime years at Manchester United and Real Madrid, winning a total of five UCL titles and seven league titles. But the 38-year-old released a bold statement: he believed the SPL would become a top 5 league in the next 5 years and he would continue to play there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This was before Saudi Arabia\u2019s huge summer signings.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hot Summer Chaos<\/b><\/p>\n On June 6, football headlines revealed that Ballon d\u2019Or winner Karim Benzema signed a two-year $436 million contract with Al Ittihad. The world was shocked \u2014 how could the best forward in the world make a big move from 14-time European champion Real Madrid to a no-name Al Ittihad? Yet the Benzema singing would only be the start to a wave of signings throughout the entire summer.<\/span><\/p>\n Soon, the likes of N\u2019Golo Kant\u00e9 ($109M\/yr \u2192 Al Ittihad), Marcelo Brozovi\u0107 ($30M\/yr \u2192 Al Nassr), Allan Saint-Maximin (Al Ahli), Sadio Man\u00e9 ($30M\/yr \u2192 Al Nassr), and even manager and legendary midfielder Steven Gerrard (Al Ettifaq) joined the Saudi Pro League. While stars like Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, Son Heung-Min, and Luka Modri\u0107 rejected lucrative offers from SPL clubs, talks of signing Liverpool forward Mo Salah and Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba have now surfaced as well. And with the chaotic summer transfer window coming to a close, the Saudi Pro League climbing the league rankings is not so farfetched anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But why now?<\/b><\/p>\n The Saudi summer transfer chaos is a direct product of sportswashing, a technique used by a corrupt regime to cover up its political and social wrongdoings. Saudi Arabia has come under scrutiny in recent years due to its severe lack of human rights and rise in imprisonment and abuse of those who speak out against the government\u2019s harsh policies regarding LGBTQ+ rights.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ultimately, Saudi Arabia aims to accomplish a smaller goal under a larger goal. First, by acquiring several top-tier players to come play SPL football using oil money, the Saudi Pro League, and thus Saudi Arabia, can establish its credibility as a strong football nation. Later, these well-known players could become ambassadors to sponsor a bid to Saudi\u2019s ultimate goal: hosting the 2030 World Cup. <\/span> What\u2019s happening? Brazilian football star Neymar made a surprise move to the Saudi Pro League, leaving his Paris Saint-Germain teammates to head for Al Hilal on a near $100 million transfer fee. After failing to win a major European title with PSG and former teammate Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, Neymar is only one of the dozens of…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[195],"staff_name":[48],"class_list":["post-2707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-september-23","staff_name-vince-kim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2709,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2707\/revisions\/2709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2707"},{"taxonomy":"staff_name","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memorialswordandshield.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/staff_name?post=2707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span> While Saudi has denied any section of players\u2019 contracts including the ambassador bid clause, it\u2019s become increasingly difficult to deny Saudi\u2019s plan. After all, what better way to cover up corruption than hosting one of the most watched sporting events and promoting a country\u2019s cleansed image by flaunting wealth and power? <\/span>
\n<\/span> On a final note, this also is not the first time a country has leveraged the World Cup as a means to clean its reputation. Qatar and the 2022 World Cup is a great example, but an even more eye-opening one has to be the 1978 World Cup hosted by Argentina. Argentina had been taken over by a military coup led by Jorge Rafael Videla and those who stood against Videla\u2019s regime and their families mysteriously disappeared overnight, with several mothers and grandmothers taking the streets of Buenos Aires to protest the disappearances of their fathers, husbands, and sons. And guess which country won that World Cup? Argentina.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"