In the early morning of the 16th, Neymar put on the blue shirt of the new moon in Riyadh. The two sides signed a contract for two years-Saudi football gained the fattest prey with a transfer fee of 0.1 billion euros and an annual salary of 0.15 billion dollars.
In the eyes of Chinese fans, Saudis burn money without blinking, which is both sour and familiar-after all, just a few years ago, the “Past Life” version of “with hundreds of millions of people, it was very popular in the Super League, but at that time, the more familiar title of fans was” Kingyuan football “.
So, what is the difference between the Saudi league and the Chinese Super League? Will they repeat the mistakes of the Super League?
Neymar 0.1 billion euro transfer fee to join the Saudi league.
First of all, we need to understand why “Kingyuan football” has brought a huge blow to the Super League and the national football.
The reason why “Kingyuan football” has been criticized is that the crude short-term goal completely ignores the fragile foundation of Chinese football and unilaterally raises the value and treatment of foreign aid and local players, making the market environment and reality extremely upside down.
The result of pursuing short-term record and eyeball economy is that youth training is completely ignored, which directly leads to the overall defeat of national names at all levels in 10 years.
The current fault-style age structure of the national football team just proves the damage of Kingyuan: The veteran has been in service for extended periods again and again; The medieval era missed the best promotion period due to the replacement in some clubs that year; the newcomers were ignored continuously, lacking competition experience and catching up with the difficult operation problems after the tide of Kingyuan. Even if they could still “generate electricity by Love”, they were doomed to be unsustainable.
So, what about Saudi football?
Compared with “Kingyuan football”, Saudi Arabia, which has a stronger foundation, will not have a player fault in the short term at least.
The Football Association has promoted youth training with official strength. Saudi Arabia has won many Asian youth football matches in the past few times, while the adult team with several national youth teams as the base, last year, Qatar became the only one to beat the world champion Argentina.
Although the number of foreign aid in the Saudi league will be further increased to 8, even the traditional four Giants, do not use full targets only for short-term results.
The Saudis who are easy to get stars, difficult to base, and even less expensive have at least maintained their basic respect and reason for football.
Ronaldo opened a door for the Saudi league.
The second question is, where did the money come from in the Saudi league?
Different from the “Kingyuan football” dominated by real estate companies in the boom, the “buy buy” of the Saudi league is the behavior of the Saudi government.
Just before the transfer window opened this summer, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced the acquisition of 75% of each of the four domestic giants. The reason why the four giants from Riyadh and gitda were able to attract aid crazily, all the money spent is national money.
How “trench” does Saudi Public Investment Fund have “? PIF, which claims to have assets of more than 600 billion US dollars, is one of the world’s well-known sovereign wealth funds. Recently, PIF just released its financial report in 2022. Last year, it achieved revenue of 25.4 billion US dollars, with a return rate of 8% for shareholders, and its performance was considerable.
As early as 2016, Saudi Arabia put forward “Vision 2030” at the national level, which includes diversified economic sources, expanding overseas investment and improving international image, among which the development of sports industry is also an important one.
In June, PIF, as the pioneer of implementing sports industry plan, “Unified” professional golf, became the new entity leader after the merger of the three major events; And earlier, they moved to acquire F1 events as a whole and operate them uniformly by Saudi Arabia.
Benzema joined the Jida alliance.
In the field of football, PIF, which invested Newcastle for only one and a half years, successfully won the Champions League, obviously also tasted the sweetness-so instead of leaving investment, taxes and profits overseas, why not introduce more superstars into China, let the Saudi league gradually go out of Asia and compete with Europe?
This motion seems bold, but in fact it has already entered the operation stage.
At the time when the South American League and the second-tier European league were declining day by day, the Western Asian League led by Saudi Arabia accepted a large number of players who were difficult to enter the rich due to technical characteristics and personalities in the previous seasons, but there were no shortage of combat capability players.
Today, the European league stars, with Ronaldo as the pioneer, have completely surpassed the “Kingyuan football” of the Chinese Super League in terms of value, treatment, quantity and appeal “.
Even the Premier League, which continues to be poached, began to be full of the Saudi people’s “buy buy buy.
The Daily Mail once criticized the Saudi people’s quick success and quick profits in the headlines of Sports: “Saudi crazy buyers are unlikely to fundamentally change football. History shows that it is not feasible to buy those veterans crazily in the short term, and this project cannot continue.”
The speaker has no intention, and the listener has a heart. As the Kingyuan football of “qianlang”, it has also owned a group of world-class stars such as Hulk, Teves, Mas Cerano, Ravich, Augusto, Pele, Zahavi, etc. But now, with the bubble dispersed, only a few veterans such as Oscar and Felani are still sticking to it.
The cost of the entire Chinese Super League also plummeted from 0.403 billion euros in the winter window of 2017 to 3.226 million euros in the current year.
The treatment of players has already experienced a cliff-like decline. The “fighting for the rich” with an annual salary of tens of millions in that year has already passed, and it has already burned long incense to get back the back salary.
At the age of 31, Neymar chose money.
Similar problems have occurred in the Saudi league.
Just before this summer’s victory in Riyadh, they were banned by FIFA because they still owed the transfer fee of former Leicester player Moussa until the summer window was opened.
Of course, now there is a Saudi league which is endorsed by the state, the financial situation is much healthier, and the operation is relatively standardized. Obviously, it will not make similar low-level mistakes again.
In addition, although the overall strength of the league is greatly divided, the broadcast coverage area is limited, and the operation and momentum-building capabilities are insufficient, it is obvious that the superstars with their own traffic will soon make up for the above shortcomings.
More importantly, after giving up the bid for the 2030 World Cup due to immature conditions, Saudi Arabia did not give up its long-term investment in football because of the setback of short-term goals. This summer’s Kingyuan offensive was only the beginning, at least in the next few transfer windows will continue.
(Supine support/Yang Jian)
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