It wasn’t in the world stadiums in São Paulo, Barcelona or Paris where the impact of the world player Neymar could be experienced particularly impressively, but in a cricket stadium in the Doha Industrial Area in Qatar. Where workers from Bangladesh and Pakistan, India and Nepal, Ghana and Kenya watched the games during the weeks of the 2022 Winter World Cup. If you asked these men back then why they gathered in the stadium in the evening, they almost always said the same three names: Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar.
There can be no doubt that Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior is one of the most influential athletes of his generation. He stormed for FC Santos, for FC Barcelona, for Paris Saint-Germain and for Brazil, for his country, for his people. He is a Champions League winner, Olympic champion and in the summer of 2014, the summer of the World Cup in Brazil, he was the winner of hearts.
He played with the burden of expectations on his back – and endured it until Colombia’s Juan Zúñiga kneed him in the back in the quarter-finals. Diagnosis: fractured lumbar vertebrae. He then watched as the Germans broke the hearts of his Brazilians in the semifinals. Although these World Cup weeks made him a hero for some compatriots, there has been more and more doubt about him since then.
Only the 10 remains: Neymar continues to wear his popular number on the shirt in Saudi Arabia. : Image: Imago
Football and Neymar – it’s become a big story, but it will probably never be the biggest story it could have been. It has been confirmed since Tuesday night that Neymar, 31, will join Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal. And before you get lost in the many discussions that this athlete still triggers, you should ask yourself fundamentally: What does he want there? And what do you want from him there?
The first question can be answered briefly. His base salary: 200 million euros for two years. And that is just one of many promises made to him in Saudi Arabia. But the second question requires a more detailed answer. It is the latest and most expensive trend in this sport that Saudi Arabian League clubs have spent millions upon millions on soccer players and soccer coaches.
The deal with Neymar is the preliminary highlight. And probably not the end. Because the clubs can fall back on a generous state investment fund that is well fed by oil revenues and is worth around 800 billion dollars. He holds 75 percent of four Saudi clubs – and of course among them are those like Al-Hilal, who are now causing a sensation with star purchases.
Annual revenue is expected to rise to around 480 million
One has to assume that the clubs from the Kingdom will be able to compete with the European leaders for a long time. Even if the Saudi league should miss its ambitious goals. She wants to increase annual revenue from $120 million to about $480 million by 2030. And it doesn’t have to stay that way that this league primarily serves as a catchment area for aging stars. One of Neymar’s future Al-Hilal team-mates is 26-year-old Portugal international Ruben Neves, who chose to spend at least part of his good footballing years away from the English Premier League and in Saudi Arabia.
Unlucky with the national team: Neymar after losing the quarter-finals at the 2022 World Cup : Image: AFP
Even if enthusiasm for sports is prominent in the Saudi royal family, investing in football is far more than just a hobby. Nor do they merely serve to improve image and to whitewash the devastating human rights record of the kingdom ruled with an iron fist by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. There was some truth in the confident words of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, who wrote in an op-ed: “Saudi sports investment is about us, not how others see us.”
These investments are part of the most important Saudi future project: the restructuring of the economy, which should make the kingdom independent of oil revenues. The value of an attractive league goes far beyond its income. Attractive sporting events help to establish Saudi Arabia as a tourist destination – beyond the streams of pilgrims to the holy places of Islam.
