Cristiano Ronaldo was just the start. The former Manchester United star’s deal with Saudi club Al Nassr, which is worth more than $300 million a year, is a drop in the Persian Gulf when it comes to the scale of the oil-rich state’s footballing ambitions, which became eye-wateringly apparent this week.

Having completed a takeover of professional golf through LIV’s stunning merger with the PGA Tour, it appears Saudi Arabia’s next government-sanctioned sporting target is the beautiful game. And with a huge war chest to spend on football’s biggest stars over the next two years – as much as €20 billion ($32 billion), according to Spanish outlet El Mundo, to help propel the Saudi Professional League into one of the world’s top 10 competitions – it may never look the same again.

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It is reminiscent of how the Chinese Super League spent extraordinary amounts on players like Carlos Tevez, Alex Teixeira and Oscar to boost the sport in that country, and the country’s standing within the sport. But where that effort fizzled out amid financial crises, corruption allegations and on-field impotence, the Saudis seem to have much deeper, more intricate plans, a stronger will to see them through, an existing tradition in football to leverage (best represented by their watershed World Cup upset over Messi’s Argentina in Qatar) and, crucially, a lot more money.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/first-it-was-liv-golf-now-saudi-arabia-is-staging-a-32-billion-football-takeover-20230607-p5deq9.html