Cristiano Ronaldo has just launched his own YouTube channel and has over 15m subscribers already.
He’s still one of the biggest names in football, Ronaldo. He can still draw a crowd. It’s just that not much of that is about the actual football anymore. This is what playing in Saudi Arabia does for you.
Who does Ronaldo play for? Hands up. Did they win the Saudi Pro League last year? Try again. When did he score his last club goal? Have a guess.
At the weekend, he was visible on social media but that was because he was thundering yet another vainglorious free-kick miles high and wide of the goal. He is, strangely, becoming very famous for that these days. So it was all a bit of a joke. And it often is over there because the truth is that nobody really cares.
And this is the environment Ivan Toney, one of English football’s most able centre forwards, may be about to walk in to at a time when nobody else appears to want to sign him. The world of Saudi football where – despite talk of its growth and its future and its potential – the size of the wages are still the most interesting thing.
Cristiano Ronaldo launched his own YouTube channel and already has 15 million subscribers
Ronaldo still draws a crowd but it is no longer about the football while he is in Saudi Arabia
Ivan Toney has been linked with a move to Saudi Arabia amid a lack of Premier League interest
Toney, the Brentford striker, has an offer from the Saudi club Al-Ahli that is thought to be in the region of £15m to £17m a year. For context, that’s about a third of the total Brentford wage bill. It’s a lot of money for a player who has not earned a vast amount – by modern Premier League standards – on a football journey that started at Northampton and took him to Peterborough and then to west London via loans at places like Barnsley, Shrewsbury, Scunthorpe and Wigan.
Equally, it seems odd that an outlier league such as Saudi’s should transpire to be the final destination after all of those years of hard work and gradual progress.
Brentford insist they have not had a single palatable offer from the Premier League for an England international with just a year left on his contract and who only a season ago seemed more likely to end up at Arsenal or Manchester United than anywhere else.
‘He’s good enough for a top English club without question,’ said a recruitment specialist who has tracked him since his time at Peterborough.
‘He…