Lionel Messi rejected a sensational return to the Camp Nou to join MLS side Inter Miami. Karim Benzema leaves the Champions League powerhouse Real Madrid to join Saudi Arabian side Al-Ittihad, and Jordan Henderson at the ripe old age of 33 is on the verge of cashing in his morals for one final payday. For these transfers, and the countless more that have happened over the last couple of months, I have been left feeling sickened, disillusioned, and despondent. To use a tired expression, the game has gone.
This was my thought process. The more I think about it though, perhaps this isn’t a bad thing after all, or rather not a total disaster, anyway.
Before I go any further with this article, I want to address the elephant in the room. Saudi Arabia. They were a good news story for five minutes in December when they beat eventual world champions Argentina in the Qatar World Cup. This moment aside, the oil-state nation is dodgy. I realise that is a flippant understatement, but quite frankly I don’t have enough knowledge on the situation to write a more articulate piece on this, so let’s stick with dodgy and move on.
So why have I done a U-turn on the whole transfer saga? There are a few reasons for this, namely hypocrisy and optimism.
I live my life in the past, particularly when it comes to football. Haaland, De Bruyne and Ederson are three of the best players in the world in their position currently, but I will never rate them higher than Ronaldo, Zidane or Buffon. You could argue that any of the former are better than the latter and that may be fair. I just won’t accept it. Nevertheless, it is great that we still have these incredible players coming through.
With that being said, I bring you Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Two players who will go down as the best to ever kick a ball. They’ve both won nearly every trophy they’ve competed for, both broken every record there is to break. And in 2023 both players sold their footballing soul for a big paycheque. Or did they?
Well, they did. That’s undeniable. Just a cursory Google search will show the sickeningly large sums of money the two players are earning, with fan accounts breaking this down to how much they earn per day, hour, minute, second etc. But, at the risk of sounding a little wanky, perhaps it is more than just cold hard cash that brought the two men to Riyadh and Miami. Both men have played in the European elite for nearly two decades. They’ve been teammates with countless superstars, but also with players who come from more obscure nations, not the traditional powerhouses. Maybe there is a part of them that wants to start a revolution? Their legacy on the field could fill a book or ten, but maybe the desire to do more off the field is a temptation?
For Messi the link is more obvious. David Beckham regenerated the interest in MLS when he signed for LA Galaxy in 2007, and since then more and more high-profile players made the switch. Thierry Henry, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Andrea Pirlo, Didier Drogba, Sebastian Giovinco… The list goes on and on. Saudi Arabia certainly doesn’t have the same history on this front; however they certainly are flexing their muscles. It is clear that the China experiment in the mid-2010s didn’t work out in the long term, but there will be those involved in the Saudi glow-up that will be keen to learn from the mistakes of the past.
I mentioned previously the hypocrisy, and that falls with the typical fans. There is this notion in football that players must be loyal. That you can sign for a team and if you are a good player then you need to spend your life with the team. You, reading this right now, what is your job? If someone offered you ten times your currently salary to move to a different company, would you do it? Would you stop to question how it impacts your colleagues, your manager, the customers? Probably not. Why should footballers do it?
On a further hypocritical note, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the outrage of English Premier League sides who are infuriated at the notion of players leaving this division for the allure of the Saudi oil money. English football has always been a financial powerhouse for as long as I have been following it, but things have gotten so much worse in recent years. I am sick to death of top talented players choosing clubs like Bournemouth and Fulham over Ajax and AC Milan. As The Athletic wrote about recently, Ruben Neves was the teenage captain of Porto and opted to join Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Championship when he could have had his pick of Europe’s elite teams. While Wolves fans seem accepting of Neves’ decision to leave having served the club well over his time at the Molineux, there are certainly a group of fans there who are outraged at him choosing to join the dollar bills in Saudi Arabia over the Premier League. To them I say, simply, ha ha ha.
A lot of the talking points around all these mad transfers is that of doom and gloom, of negativity. There is note for optimism, however. Big players are leaving for Saudi Arabia, and for America. The traditional big leagues are being outspent and this could have very positive implications. Messi and Ronaldo are gone. Man City have a choke on the Premier League and Europe, and Real Madrid have bullied Europe for years. These spells don’t last. Think how dominant Manchester United, Barcelona, and Juventus have been in the last 15 years and how up and down they have been. Real and City will always be top clubs, but they won’t be this dominant forever. With Saudi Arabia and places having the financial muscle to tempt away elite players, this could set about a new era. This could boost competitiveness. This could lower the threshold for the top level and allow clubs from Portugal, the Netherlands, Scotland, Turkey etc to compete more realistically in the Champions League.
This could be a breakthrough for young players. Some gems still break through, but it certainly feels like the top-level clubs are producing less home-grown players who are first team ready. If clubs are aware that a team like Al-Nassr could cherry pick their star player, then perhaps more would be invested in the development of the youth. No longer would the academies be there to placate the older generations and to sell on to lower league clubs at an inflated rate, but now the emphasis would be on integrating them in the team earlier and earlier. It’s a lot of ifs, buts and maybes, but there is a chance, or rather an opportunity.
To sign off, I just want to say that whether you like it or not, this has been the most memorable transfer window that I have experienced in a long time. Gone are the days of fun Transfer Deadline Days, with Jim White shouting that X has sensationally joined Y from Z. Gone are the days of shock transfers as social media takes the suspense out of everything. Gone are the days of dildos being waved in people’s faces on a live broadcast. Transfer deadline day is a boring non-event nowadays, and the whole transfer season is tedious. While I stand by my earlier statement that the Saudi splurging is ‘dodgy’, I am enthralled.
Worst case, the bubble will burst on the Saudi Arabian adventure and best case… maybe change, real positive change. Maybe the Saudi league will be broadcast and maybe it’ll be entertaining. There is too much up in the air right now and the bulk of this article is based on speculation which may fall flat in the coming months. For now, though, there isn’t anything we can do about it, so we might as well try and enjoy it (whilst still acknowledging that things are a little bit… dodgy).
Heart of Football 
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