‘The sky’s the limit’: can Saudi Arabian football pull off what China failed to do?
- The Saudi Pro League’s big spending has drawn inevitable comparisons to the doomed Chinese Super League, but will it learn from China’s mistakes?
It’s been barely five years since West Ham United footballer Marko Arnautovic kicked up a dreadful fuss to try and force a transfer to Chinese Super League (CSL) club Guangzhou Evergrande.
Take with a pinch of salt what Arnautovic’s brother and agent, Danijel, said about a desire to “win titles in China”. The forward was 29 years old and reportedly being offered £280,000 (US$360,000) per week to take his capricious talent to Guangzhou.
It was January 2019 and the CSL and its clubs were still trying to paint a picture of a league committed to luring the world’s best and most high-profile footballers.
But the reality was rather different, a far cry from April 2016, when the Chinese Football Association declared in a report that it intended to become a “world football superpower” by 2050.
This was emboldened by President Xi Jinping’s publicly stated ambition for China to not only qualify for a World Cup, something they have previously managed only once, in 2002, but to eventually host and win the quadrennial tournament.
The end game imagined by Xi, when he encouraged Chinese football to think big, was a national team capable of going toe-to-toe with the heavyweights: Brazil, France, Spain, England and current world champions Argentina.
