Will Mo Salah join the Saudi Pro League & break a new record ? 👀

Darling, should I stay or should I go ? ⚽️🎶 

Mo Salah may be about to make history again. The Sun has reported that Liverpool Football Club was offered a $214 million deal by Saudi Pro League’s Al Ittihad club نادي الاتحاد السعودي to sign the star forward and Egypt’s national team captain 🇪🇬. Liverpool has until tomorrow to give a response, after which the transfer window will close ❗️ 

If Liverpool were to agree to this offer -they rejected the previous one at $189 million- the record for the highest transfer fee currently held by Paris Saint-Germain for the 2017 transfer of Neymar would be broken 🏅.

Mo Salah would join other African players who have found a new pitch to play on in the Saudi Pro League. Here’s a breakdown to understand the growing influential presence of African players in the SPL. 🌍 

What is the Saudi Pro League ?

If you’ve been offline all summer (good for you), here’s a quick recap on what’s been breaking the football’s internet ⬇️.

🇸🇦 The competition has been established for decades, but became a professional league in 2008. It adopted its current name in 2018.
⚽️The league is composed of 18 teams and has a relegation system. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) (Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund), owns a majority in four of the teams, including one that was promoted for the current season. 💸 
💳 This summer, the league went on a massive shopping spree on the transfer market and spent 895,21 million (according to data from Transfer Market) on transfer fees with the goal to become a competitive league (all part of Saudi’s #Vision2030).

 What about African players in the Saudi Pro League ?

💰 About 20% of the aforementioned amount was used to pay transfer fee for African players.

🌍 According to the BBC the SPL counted about 40 African players and 2 coaches last season. With names such as N’Golo Kanté, Sadio Mané, Edouard Coulibaly joining the ranks the numbers are up !
In comparison, there were 44 players in 18 out of the 20 teams of the English Premier League according to a report by KPMG released in 2021.

The presence of African players in the SPL is not new, players such as 🇲🇦’s Abderrazak Hamdallah have been breaking records in the league way before this summer’s media frenzy.

📺 Newly established deals by IMG such as the ones with CANAL+, ZAP, Sporty TV, Azam, StartTimes will allow African audiences to follow their favourite players.

Can the African players’ success on the Saudi pitch encourage investments in African football ?

To be continued…