Despite a recent focus on youth, the big SPL clubs will have the Middle East’s biggest star in their sights, bringing a possible link-up with Mané and Ronaldo
“We do not know where Mohamed will play next season,” Mohamed Salah’s agent, Ramy Abbas Issa, said on social media on Tuesday. “This also means that no one else knows. Beware of the attention seekers.”
A worthy warning but a futile one now that the Liverpool legend has confirmed he is leaving Anfield at the end of this season. While there will be some attention on whether he can end a hugely successful nine-year spell with a trophy, clicks worldwide will be focused more on his next destination.
His former fellow forwards Sadio Mané and Roberto Firmino left Europe for Saudi Arabia (though with mixed results as the Senegalese star is still playing well at Al-Nassr and the Brazilian has left for Qatar) and it is a path that Salah may well take too.
The Saudi media certainly hopes so and the belief is that the country is in pole position. Interest has been strong since 2023 when the Saudi Pro League (SPL) started spending big on star players. Cristiano Ronaldo had joined Al-Nassr a few months earlier but in that first summer Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kanté, Neymar, Riyad Mahrez and many others headed to Riyadh and Jeddah.
Three years on most of them remain though there has been a change of tack by clubs (including the “Big Four” of Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli, who are owned by the country’s Public Investment Fund – PIF), to go for younger players. That also makes sense financially with signs that the country has been cutting back spending in other areas. Yet the ambition to make the SPL a major player on the international stage remains.
Maintaining global interest is not easy with even the presence of Ronaldo offering diminishing marketing returns over time. The question of what happens after the Portuguese megastar departs has been debated at length. Salah would be one answer, for a while at least, partly because he is still a top-class player but also, of course, because he is the biggest name in Middle Eastern sport. There are plenty of players from the region already in the league but Salah is a level above. The league may take time, if it can at all, to rival the top tiers of top European countries but there is something to be said for cementing its place as the premier domestic competition in a football-loving region.
For the five clubs that can realistically afford the Egyptian, there are football reasons for and against. Al-Ittihad have had offers turned down before and the Jeddah club would probably be a frontrunner. The defending champions have had a poor season, however, one made worse by losing Benzema to Al-Hilal in January. That means the Tigers lack a star name and, with the former Aston Villa winger Moussa Diaby not as impressive this season as last and likely to leave, there would be a place waiting for Salah in the port city on the eastern shores of the Red Sea, across from Egypt. Al-Ahli, the other club in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s football hotbed, are Asian champions but also have Mahrez in fine form.
In the capital, Al-Hilal is another possibility with Malcom on the right inconsistent. The most successful club in Saudi Arabia and Asia can also make a claim to being the biggest. The megastar signing of Neymar didn’t work due to injuries and while Benzema is now in Riyadh, the French striker will be 39 this year. If Salah does join however, it would mean that he would be, at 34 this summer, the youngest of the forward three at the Blues, who beat Manchester City so memorably at the Fifa Club World Cup last summer.
As Ronaldo reportedly went on strike this season as he thought Al-Nassr were not getting the same support as the other PIF clubs, it would be interesting to see his reaction if Salah went to their bitter rivals Al-Hilal. But then Al-Nassr are going well, top of the league with eight games to go and a first league title since 2019 is a real possibility. Reuniting with Sadio Mané would be interesting as would the prospect of Ronaldo and Salah in attack.
And there is one more. Al-Qadsiah are turning the Big Four into a quintet. Under Brendan Rodgers, the Reds have impressed, keeping in touch at the top. Backed by Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s oil company and one of the biggest in the world by revenue, cost is not an issue and the team does not yet have a global megastar.
There is also a religious aspect, cited by a number of players who have made the move, one that is perhaps underappreciated elsewhere. “Because I’m Muslim and this is a Muslim country, and I have always wanted to live here,” Benzema said when asked why he joined Al-Ittihad.
Whatever Salah’s reasons, if the Liverpool legend does join a club in Saudi Arabia this summer, he will become the face of the league for years to come.
