Joao Félix: Arabia Renaissance – How He’s Thriving

“By playing in a league with a lower level than the Spanish, English or Italian championship, and where the tactical demand is much lower than that of these three championships in which he has played, his qualities stand out,” explains a source from Al Nassr to this newspaper, who asks us to remain anonymous. At the Saudi club they are extremely cautious when it comes to sharing any private information about the first team and the entity. In fact, last summer an employee was fired for leaking a possible signing to a local media, and very few dare to speak to the press, knowing that the club takes no prisoners: “Especially with the press here, who sell you right away. “They don’t know how to respect the confidentiality of a source,” they tell us.

Al Nassr has undergone a profound restructuring in recent months. Cristiano has turned the Saudi club into a mini Portugal and Joao feels at home. The coach, Jorge Jesus, plus his entire staff, the sports management, the technical secretariat, the medical staff, the nutritionists and quite a few youth coaches are Portuguese. The rest are Saudi workers, some Brazilians and just four Spaniards: Toni Mengual, the goalkeeping coach, and the other three belong to the scouting department, which they arrived at the hands of Fernando Hierro, who stopped being the sports director last summer.

This context of a marked Portuguese accent, led by Ronaldo, was largely responsible for Joao Félix deciding to leave Chelsea and come to Riyadh. The London club needed to get rid of some of its stars to make money and free up salary mass. The Conference League and the Club World Cup, plus qualification for the Champions League, had left a good taste in Stamford Bridge’s mouth, but the American ownership wanted more and was demanding with the list of reinforcements. And casualties.

The 2026 World Cup in mind

He didn’t count on Joao and Joao knew that, in a World Cup year, staying in London would put his presence in the United States at risk. So first he looked sentimentally, considering the option of returning to Benfica, but the Lisbon club could never have assumed the 20 million gross that he pocketed at Chelsea, not even a close amount. And no one in Europe was willing to pay that salary for a declining footballer. Since his signing in the summer of 2019 for Atlético (127 million the red and white club paid Benfica), Joao had been devalued by 80%. Last summer, his market price was 20 million, and now it has risen to 25, his first promotion after six years stumbling around Europe between Atlético, Barça, Chelsea (in two stages) and Milan. In total, 323 games and only 92 goals and 44 assists, numbers that have completely changed in Arabia.

In these five months at Al Nassr he has posted the best numbers of his career: 19 goals in 19 games, in addition to six assists. He is the top scorer in the Saudi Pro League, with 13 goals, the same as Cristiano, and the team has found that commitment that it needed so much to fight again for the Asian Champions League and for the league, in which it is second, just one point behind Al-Hilal: «Ronaldo called him to come here. In fact, he traveled to Arabia to sign his contract on Cristiano’s private plane. He knew that his signing would give the team a leap in quality, and he was not wrong,” they explain in Al Nassr.

50 million (30 fixed and 20 in variables) the Saudi club paid Chelsea for Joao, recovering almost all of the investment it made for the Portuguese in the summer of 2024, when it paid 52 million to Atlético. What is not true are the 70 million euros in salary, 35 per season, that the attacker has been said to earn. PIF, the sovereign fund that manages Al Nassr, approved a contract very similar to that of Chelsea: 20 million euros gross, with the difference that here everything goes to his pocket, while in London half went to taxes.

But beyond the money, Jorge Mendes, Paulo Futre, Pedro Cordeiro, the Gestifute agency and Polaris, the people and companies that manage Joao’s career, what they wanted was to revitalize the career of Félix, who at only 25 years old was in danger of having a premature death. Everyone understood that shaking hands with Cristiano was the best way to regain momentum: “Whoever has played with Ronaldo and trains with him every day knows that he has no better source of inspiration and motivation,” their club details.

The demand of the Saudi league is what it is, and that entails less tactical involvement than what is distilled in Europe and which is so difficult for Joao to assume. In Arabia, a big team can allow two players not to run, as happens to Al Nassr with Cristiano and Joao Félix. His talent and quality is enough, as long as there are nine others who run for themselves and for the two stars: «We are not surprised by what is happening to him. We know and know how good he is, and we had no doubt that he would shine in Arabia,” says his entourage, although with a small mouth.

Really, the step taken by Joao is nothing to brag about. They don’t want to boast too much about their level in Arabia, because they know that Europe is where Joao really has to be measured, but he had to look out for himself, and in his current context the best thing was to go to Riyadh to regain confidence and feel like a footballer again, one of the good ones, one of those who decide games: “For many, what I’m going to say may sound outrageous, but he is the driving force of the team right now. More than Christian,” says our anonymous source from Al-Nassr.

Despite the growth of the Saudi league, its level remains below the European average. The arrival of foreign players has undoubtedly raised the technical level, but the tactical level continues to be a pending issue. There is still a disorder and indiscipline that imaginative players take advantage of, and that is the case with Joao. Here he has found a championship that exploits his virtues and minimizes his shortcomings. In fact, at Al-Nassr they consider him the perfect attacker to manage the freedom that Jorge Jesus grants him, both to him and to CR7, and since everything has gone well for him from day one, Joao has maintained his performance over time and that enthusiasm with which he arrived, without stopping to think about why he has had to leave Europe to find his best version.

«He drives the creation of the game. When his level drops, if he does, the team will plummet, because this season Al-Nassr lives off what Joao generates. Yes, Cristiano is decisive because he has one and he plugs it in, but the thing is that the one he has is no longer manufactured by him, but is normally generated by Joao. That is what our team was missing in recent years,” they explain at the club.

Away from the tactical discipline of the European greats in which he has played, especially during his time at Atlético, Joao has found in Al-Nassr the perfect ecosystem for his football, away from those corsets and the bureaucracy that he finds so difficult to assimilate. In his club they talk about a footballer who is reluctant to have a high cognitive load, but this profile of players shines here. Furthermore, Joao feels recognized by his teammates, his coach and sports officials, and his head is clear. In every way. Also in the staff. Riyadh, like most of Arabia, is a boring city, with hardly any social life or distractions, and this is another of the factors that have helped make Joao the best.

«He has excellent conditions, but he has to have the right context to perform. On and off the field. Riyadh does not allow you to value anything other than playing football. Life here is very monotonous and, until he has that hope and doesn’t break down when those moments of boredom come that any European feels when he lives in Arabia, everything will go well for him,” analyzes our source, who is convinced that this season, the year of the World Cup, he will maintain this level until June.

His second season will be another thing, starting in September, but right now Joao feels like a protagonist, he is playing good games and scoring many goals. The wind is blowing in your favor and it is up to you to keep it that way.

The chaotic playing pattern of the Saudi league, Al-Nassr’s mini Portugal, the tedious life of Riyadh and the blessing of his friend Cristiano. This is how Joao Félix has been reborn from his journey through the desert in Europe.