Three years since the Saudi Pro League began challenging football’s established order, the response from Europe remains largely one of disdain and derision. Yet with each transfer window its clear Saudi football isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Ollie Watkins’ move from Aston Villa to Al-Hilal is the domestic league’s latest statement of intent, as the league continues to target established Premier League talent; but the mood and perception felt back at home continues to be highly sceptical.
Watkins is the latest big name signing from Premier League this summer; following in the footsteps of Crysencio Summerville from West Ham United, and Tijjani Reijnders from Manchester City. In addition, Al-Hilal are also likely to secure Gabriel Martinelli from champions from Arsenal.
While Saudi recruitment has started to evolve towards younger players and a more sustainable pipeline of talent, the final few weeks of this window have sharpened the focus on players at the top of their game from the highest echelons; namely the Premier League.
Yet, with so much talent still moving between the Premier League and the Saudi Pro League, has anything changed in how Saudi football is perceived in England?
As an Asian football fan based in England, I often feel like an isolated advocate for Saudi football in a deeply cynical football community, which is never more apparent than during the summer transfer window.
For most of the year, Saudi football barely registers with the average English fan. An occasional clickbait story about Cristiano Ronaldo or a prominent British coach aside, limited exposure to matches, and let’s be frank, a distinct dearth in interest means engagement with the Saudi Pro League remains close to zero.
The transfer window is therefore one of the few opportunities to gauge opinion. The reaction is often predictable: a combination of mockery and frustration, mixed with a smug disregard for Saudi and wider Middle Eastern culture. Players are regularly touted as wasting their careers having moved to the region, with their ‘obscene’ spending being blamed for inflating prices across Europe, conveniently ignoring the Premier League’s own distorted contribution to the transfer market.
The reaction to Watkins’ move has been similar. A decision seen as throwing away his career, made only out of financial greed that is destined to become a dead-end move. It’s a predictable response, having experienced this dozens of times over the last few years.
None of this is new of course; when the Chinese Super League began spending heavily in the mid-2010s, the reaction was similar: mockery, followed by anger, then an entitled concern that established talent was being drawn away from Europe. Of course, the Chinese bubble eventually burst, something many in England will hope will also materialise with the Saudi Pro League.
Money remains central to Saudi football’s growth, it would be foolish to pretend otherwise, however the wider proposition is changing. The Saudi Pro League supplied just under 50 players to this summer’s World Cup, the sixth-highest total of any domestic league. Even when excluding home nationals, it provided more players than the Portuguese and Belgian top flights. The growing influence on the pitch, at the very highest of levels, already dwarfs what had ever been achieved by the growth of the Chinese Super League.
In that, Ivan Toney offered a tangible opportunity to test that growth with the English public. Since joining Al-Ahli, Toney has largely disappeared from the English football conversation, all the while leading the attack of a club competing for domestic honours and continental silverware. Despite his success in Jeddah, few in England will have even known where he was playing, let alone how he was performing.
When England had plenty of Premier League strikers scoring goals, the difficult Toney question didn’t need to be asked. When that pool weakened, it quickly did. His late call-up for the World Cup posed a redemption arc for the striker, with Saudi football associated as a contributing factor. Sadly, his brief involvement, playing as predictable second fiddle to arguably the best striker on the planet in Harry Kane, generated neither acclaim nor criticism; an opportunity lost to digest English football’s relationship with the Saudi Pro League.
His story however, quietly challenged the idea of the league as a career dead-end. Within two years, Toney left England as a proven Premier League goalscorer in his prime, overlooked by the biggest clubs in Europe, choosing to take a different career path that has developed him as a goalscorer for it. Had that eventually led to a noticeable England return, it would have offered the perfect counter-narrative: he went to Saudi Arabia, continued to excel and proved his doubters wrong. Saudi football needs more stories like this if perceptions are ever going to shift across Europe.
Watkins instead, offers an altogether different but more typical transfer story, however. He remains an England international, for now, but it’s clear his trajectory has changed – even before his suggested move to Al-Hilal had even been mooted.
A player linked with Arsenal only a year ago, and leaving Aston Villa after a personally indifferent campaign; whatever the move, downing tools to force through a move away from a UEFA Champions League side is a bad look all round. His transfer therefore fits comfortably into a pre-existing narrative: another player still capable of playing at the highest level, choosing an easy way out and taking the money.
Watkins’ case showcases how easy it still is to tell a negative tale, and crucially how difficult it is to change perceptions. Toney may not ever return to England to fully demonstrate the success and growth he has had in the Gulf. While more likely of a return to Europe in their peak, the younger players moving to Saudi most recently, such as Angelo or Kader Meite, risks either being framed as a player who wasted their prime in Saudi Arabia or as someone whose time there is conveniently forgotten. Saudi football is unlikely to get credit either way.
The question, then, is whether it needs it.
If Saudi state investment in sport was partly about soft power, international influence and changing perceptions; I’d argue it does. However, perception is a fickle business in a world based on tradition and universal click bait; changes must be earnt on the pitch – as the ongoing relationship between Newcastle United fans and owners plays out currently.
The expanded Club World Cup offers the key opportunity, not just for Saudi clubs but for Asian football more broadly, to prove not only the quality of Asian players, but the ambitions of their club sides. It provides a stage where perceptions can be challenged through competition rather than transfer fees or promotional campaigns.
The first edition was predictably dismissed across Europe as little more than an extended pre-season tournament. Yet Chelsea’s status as world champions has oddly endured as a notable marker in the European football psyche. Give the format another two editions and its credibility as a genuine measure of global club football is expected to grow.
This is ultimately where the argument should be settled, Saudi football does not need to convince English fans that the standards are identical, it needs to become good enough, competitive enough and interesting enough when facing the very best from across Europe.
As Watkins becomes the latest Englishman to swap the Premier League for the Pro League, the narrative back home remains altogether familiar: of Saudi Arabia as a footballing backwater, that players only go for the money, and that their careers are being wasted. Whether advocates like me can claim progress, it is always easier to be cynical, when few will ever glimpse action on a pitch or a television screen.
Three years on from their explosion in investment, as others have experienced in the past, it’ll take time for Saudi football to break the establishment of global football. Sustained investment is required, but so is sporting achievement.
With a new season of AFC Champions League Elite action due to start shortly, ever more pressure to increase Saudi football’s presence not only on the continental but the international stage becomes more important to achieve the project’s overriding ambitions.
