Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Sadio Mané… The Saudi championship will probably be the attraction of this year 2023/2024.
8 months ago, Cristiano Ronaldo offered himself a golden bridge by signing at Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia. From now on, the Saudi championship has become a real Eldorado for footballers, not for the sporting aspect, but for the financial aspect. While since January, the RMC Sport channel (but also its Twitch channel) has been broadcasting all of Cristiano Ronaldo’s matches exclusively, there is no broadcasting agreement for the Saudi championship for the year 2023/2024 in France. But with all the signatures that follow (Benzema, Kanté, Mané, Fabinho, Brozovic …), the Saudi championship will become attractive and broadcasters should seek to position themselves in the coming weeks.
At Al-Nassr, apart from Cristiano Ronaldo, Marcelo Brozovic, Seko Fofana, Alex Telles and Sadio Mané have signed. Karim Benzema, free from any contract, signed a three-year free contract with Al-Ittihad at the beginning of June before seeing N’Golo Kanté join him and then former Liverpool player Fabinho. Milinkovic-Savic signed a three-year contract with Al-Hilal for almost 50 million euros for the transfer, while Ruben Neves also committed to Al-Hilal for three seasons. Playing in the Premier League last season, Frenchman Allan Saint-Maximin, also 26, signed for three years with Al-Ahli as did Brazilian international Roberto Firmino who signed until 2026 at Al-Ahli . Mahrez, Edouard Mendy and Kalidou Koulibaly complete this totally crazy transfer window.
For Grégoire Akcelrod, in charge of the club’s pre-season and the development of the Saudi structure in Europe and interviewed by the 10 sport, this is only the beginning. “Squads are limited to 8 Europeans. I sincerely believe that Saudi Arabia can quickly become the NBA of football. No one realizes what is happening… When you watch a crazy game, for many of us, it’s to see the great players. And more and more great players are going to Saudi Arabia. It’s going to become more and more difficult for European clubs to renew themselves and be competitive. And today today it is increasingly true, all the big players are considering Saudi Arabia
