Saudi Pro League

[mattcity5]

From what I was reading the other day, I don’t think many will be going over there for just one season from the UK, or they will be hammered with tax when they return.

If a person were to leave the country now, they couldn’t return until April 2025, without huge tax implications, so effectively two season’s minimum to get the full benefit of the ridiculous wages.

Didn't know that. I guess some wouldn't return to the same country they came from though - contract ends here, Saudi payday for a year, then a more regular deal in France/Spain/Germany etc...

 

[domalino]

What is it with this fetish that Arab countries are ambitious and the people are smarter than everyone else? As opposed to the reality, which is backwards.

Bin Salman is more David Brent than Steve Jobs.

An Arsenal fan telling everyone how backwards and incompetent arabs are? I'm getting these bizarre flashbacks to September 2008...

 

[SebastianBlue]

The stock market was awful last year. Worst in a decade.

You are mistaking sustainable and self-sustaining. It is sustainable for the Saudi government. It doesn't have to be self-sustaining for the next 10 or 25 years. If they can get it up and running as an MLS alternative, as the major league in MENA, it will become self-sustaining long term.

They are thinking incredibly long term. They put a team next to the NEOM line because they think there'll be millions of people there by 2045. Currently theres no one. They dont' care about short term.

The Line itself is a representation of the mismanagement and miscalculation of much of what Saudi Arabia (specifically MBS) is doing now. It is a farcically flawed project with little hope of ever being completed—and even if it was somehow fully realised, at the massive expense necessary, it would be a hellish dystopia for many, many reasons that even middling architects, ecologists, medical professionals, and political analysts could (and have) outlines at length.

Whilst they may be projecting themselves as “thinking incredibly long term”, much of their longterm vision is deeply flawed and almost entirely predicated on continued absolute political control and extreme economic prosperity, which cannot be guaranteed over those timeframes. And certainly not with how they are going about their current development beyond the fossil fuel industry.

This isn’t merely naysaying based on a distaste for the regime, though, that in of itself is a major issue for the viability of the Saudi Pro League, given to compete with the top European leagues you need European and American viewers. It is a sober analysis of their haphazard—despite over-marketed hype—approach to most of their development, enabled and sustained by vast wealth and a draconian approach to control of the populace and the press.

It is easy to seem like a visionary leader or state when you can suppress all mention (or even confirmed existence) of your many failures and mistakes.

 

[SebastianBlue]

I think there are many people here underestimating the ambition of the Saudis and also the experts employed to make the smart decisions for medium and long term success..

I think there are many drastically overestimating the the Saudis and the experts employed to make (often pretty dumb) decisions for medium and long term development.

See my post above about why.

 

[Stephen230]

Didn't know that. I guess some wouldn't return to the same country they came from though - contract ends here, Saudi payday for a year, then a more regular deal in France/Spain/Germany etc...

I’m as far away from an expert on tax matters as it’s possible to be. The article I read was solely about people going UK- Saudi - UK, without spending a full tax year April - April out of the country. Using Henderson’s reported £700,000 a week offer as an example, they reckon the difference would be him earning £58.8 million tax free if he was still out there come April ‘25. Or £32.3 million if he returned before then.

Obviously someone going say UK- Saudi- Spain, for example would have completely different implications. But the article didn’t touch on them.

 

[SebastianBlue]

Its Saudi Arabia. If they were this country that could achieve great things, they would have went to the moon, invented the smart phone ect.

What is it with this fetish that Arab countries are ambitious and the people are smarter than everyone else? As opposed to the reality, which is backwards.

Bin Salman is more David Brent than Steve Jobs.

I have visited, worked, or lived in a few Middle Eastern countries that others would classify as “Arab” and can say that the common people are no more backward than we Brits (or Europeans more broadly). And they’re just as smart as we are, if not more so, given the political, economic, and cultural conditions they must navigate on a daily basis (which, on the whole, are usually far more challenging than ours). And their great thinkers over the course of history have contributed greatly to our prosperity now, either directly or indirectly (via charity, coercion, or worse).

The “backwardness” mostly comes from the leadership of said countries; even those “regular” people that may share the backward beliefs of the leaders of their nation may think or feel differently if their survival was not dependent on staying in line with sanctioned thought.

The biggest problem countries like Saudi Arabia have is the ineptness, cruelty, absolute power of their ruling class; just like in many others places across history (including the UK), the common populace shouldn’t be tarred and feathered along with their political leaders, especially in the case where the populace has no means to change their leaders, short of bloody uprising (with no certainty of success, and almost certain extreme hardship if it is achieved).

 

[TonyM]

If Saudi League focused on signing the top African, Asian and South American talent they'd be flying. A sign of their success would be European clubs wanting to sign their players because they are unearthing massive talent. And ultimately for the players to refuse to leave the Saudi League.

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

Its Saudi Arabia. If they were this country that could achieve great things, they would have went to the moon, invented the smart phone ect.

What is it with this fetish that Arab countries are ambitious and the people are smarter than everyone else? As opposed to the reality, which is backwards.

Bin Salman is more David Brent than Steve Jobs.

This is an incredibly myopic view of the world that doesn’t take into account any of the context of the countries in question.

For a start England has been around in some form as a stable nation for about a thousand years and in that time has benefited tremendously by taking huge amounts of resources from other countries (including Saudi Arabia). The US has been around for 250 years in its current form and has probably the greatest array of natural resources at its disposal of any country on Earth.

Saudi Arabia has been around for just 91 years and it has basically one resource. For centuries it suffered tremendously from scarcity of water and food and the resulting warring factions that came from that which delayed its inception as a coherent nation.

Neil Armstrong is OLDER than Saudi Arabia. So I’m not sure how you expect them to have developed a whole space program and got to the moon before him.

But what does any of this tell us about what is happening here and now? Saudi in the last 50 years have exploded in wealth thanks to their oil, and have been able to build some world leading infrastructure. They are not the Saudi Arabia of 1969 or even the Saudi Arabia of 2010.

To suggest that a country couldn’t possibly become world leaders in various industries because they haven’t done it historically is very naive. The middle-east would have been saying the same thing about us a thousand years ago when the roles were reversed.

I’m not making any judgments here about whether I think Saudi and MBS will succeed in their endeavour to be the world’s sporting hub because I think they’re up against it and @SebastianBlue has posted plenty of good info on some of the reasons why… but to just assume they can’t possibly do it because that’s the way it’s always been is not a good justification.

 

[doobyedoobye]

I think there are many drastically overestimating the the Saudis and the experts employed to make (often pretty dumb) decisions for medium and long term development.

See my post above about why.

I guess only time will tell..

 

[PhillyBasedBlue]

Mls is the same level as Scottish prem

Outside of the old firm id agree.