A newfound spotlight is about to fall on the Saudi Arabian Pro League after the owner of Al Nassr managed to convince Cristiano Ronaldo to come and play for his team.
There is no disputing that it is not the move Ronaldo envisaged when he made it clear in the summer of 2022 he wanted to leave Manchester United in order to play in the Champions League, but the interest in him was not considerable enough to secure a move.
Fast forward a few months and he has had his contract with United terminated and now he has signed for Al Nassr, meaning he will likely not play in the Champions League ever again. Just how was a club that many had previously never heard of able to bring one of the best footballers ever to their squad?
The deal that Ronaldo has signed with Al Nassr makes him the highest-paid footballer in the world right now, as he is set to earn £172m per season.
Saudi Arabia is a name that has become associated with extreme wealth in football, especially since the takeover of Newcastle United by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF). In terms of who specifically owns Al Nassr (and Newcastle for that matter), there is not a great deal of concrete information.
This is because nation-states cannot own football clubs, but ways have been found to get around this by clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, Newcastle, and Al Nassr. The club is Saudi-owned and there are very close ties to the Saudi royal family which runs the country and controls its wealth.
The president of the club is Musalli Al-Muammar and he was elected to the role by Al Nassr board members in 2021. Before that, he was the president of the Saudi Pro League. One of the club’s main supporters is Prince Khalid bin Fahd bin Abdulaziz.
Al Nassr was co-founded by brothers Hussein Al-Jabaa and Zaid Al-Jabaa in 1955 with former Saudi Prince Abdul Rahman bin Saud Al Saud becoming involved five years later as the club turned professional.
Due to the mysterious way in which Al Nassr is funded and owned, it is very hard to put a specific figure on what the club or the ownership is worth.
If you take Newcastle as a case study, PIF has assets totalling £320bn which puts them far ahead at the top of football’s rich list. In comparison, the owner of Manchester City is worth £21bn.
This does not mean that Al Nassr is worth the exact same amount, but it is a glimpse into the kind of wealth that prominent people in Saudi Arabian society possess. With the addition of Ronaldo, Al Nassr’s wage…
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