While it’s undeniably a coup for Saudi Arabian football, the lack of interest from Europe’s biggest teams is a sign of how the game has moved on from the one-time king of club football.
If it wasn’t so desperately sad, you’d probably laugh at the sheer irony of it. During his now-notorious interview with Piers Morgan that led to bridges being burnt with Manchester United, Cristiano Ronaldo was asked: “If it was just about money, you’d be in Saudi Arabia earning this king’s ransom, but that’s not what motivates you…”
Ronaldo nodded before answering. Less than two months on, he will arrive in the kingdom, having inked a contract with Riyadh’s Al-Nassr that will reportedly earn him £172m. Of that, £62m will be his salary. The rest will be paid in lieu of image rights and commercial deals, with the understanding being that CR7 will be a prominent part of Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
Just to put those numbers into perspective, Ronaldo was the highest-paid player in the history of the English Premier League, with his Manchester United contract worth £26m a year. In most walks of life, a six-fold increase in your income – much more if you factor in taxes – would be considered progress. In Ronaldo’s case, it’s undeniably a step back, and marks the end of the road as a top footballer.
Again, recent history is informative. After Manchester United’s dismal 2021-2022 season, when they finished sixth in the league, Ronaldo spent much of the summer agitating for a move away from the club. His agent offered his services to pretty much every top European club that could afford to pay his princely salary, and the official line from Camp Ronaldo was that he wanted to test himself in the European Champions League.
Al-Nassr are not even in the Asian Champions League this season. Their cross-town rivals, Al-Hilal, who had put together a huge financial package to sign Ronaldo in the autumn before a transfer ban scuppered their hopes, are the current Asian champions, and the most successful side in the competition’s history. If you want to be cruel, you could say that Ronaldo has left the second-best team in Manchester to join the second-best outfit in Riyadh.
Historically, Al-Nassr are one of Saudi’s most successful teams, with nine league titles, but only three of those have come in the last quarter century. In sharp contrast, Al-Hilal have won five of the last six titles. Discounting the one-off Asian Super Cup, the only continental title Al-Nassr have won is the Asian Cup Winners’ Cup in 1998. In that sense, they can be accurately compared to Everton – a big club, but forever in the shadow of their more illustrious local rivals, Liverpool.
In that Morgan interview, Ronaldo scoffed at the notion that Europe’s finest were no longer interested in him. How hard must reality be biting now. Not one big club even showed genuine interest in signing him, especially in the aftermath of a World Cup where he was benched for the knockout matches.
You could argue that Ronaldo’s every move since leaving Real Madrid has been a misstep. Think of his status when he left the Santiago Bernabeu. Real are, by a distance, the biggest club side on the planet, and the hallowed pitch has been witness to the feats of Alfredo Di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas, Paco Gento, Emilio Butragueno, Fernando Hierro, Raul Gonzalez and so many other legends of the game. Yet, when Ronaldo left, after scoring an incredible 450 goals in just 438 appearances, it was with universal acknowledgement that he was the greatest player in the club’s history.
Juventus pushed the boat out to buy him because they hoped he would replicate the European form that inspired Real to four Champions Leagues between 2014 and 2018. His acolytes will say that Ronaldo won two Serie A titles in his three years in Turin. That means nothing, because Juve had already won seven in a row by the time he arrived.
The only fact that matters is that they didn’t even get past the quarterfinals of the Champions League in his time there. After losing to Barcelona in the 2015 final and to Real two years later, it’s safe to say that that wasn’t what Juventus had hoped for when he signed. By his final season, the decline was so acute that Juve barely managed to scrape into the top four in Serie A.
Remember too that United had finished second to City the season before Ronaldo arrived. In his only full campaign, they finished 35 points behind the champions, so far back that they weren’t even a speck of dust in the rearview mirror. If neither Juve nor United were especially sad to see the back of him, this is why. The same Ronaldo who was integral to Real playing their best football since the days of Di Stefano, Puskas and Gento had become a liability, especially in a scenario where almost every top side favours a high-intensity style where the forwards lead the press.
Saudi Arabia will trumpet this as a coup, and with good reason. Whatever be his limitations on the pitch these days, Ronaldo is the world’s most visible sportsperson, with a social-media following that dwarfs every other. If he can’t help that World Cup bid, nothing will.
But for Team Ronaldo, no amount of lipstick on a pig can change the grim truth. The world’s best football teams have moved on from him. There will be no more Champions League nights, no more opportunities to add to his record 140 goals in the world’s premier club competition. That Lionel Messi, who has just wrapped a ribbon around his legendary career with the biggest trophy of all, is within 11 goals of equalling that tally might irk him even more.
Whatever he does or doesn’t do in Saudi Arabia, Ronaldo’s place in the game’s annals is secure. But you can’t help but wonder how different the final chapter might have been if he’d been given better advice by those closest to him. A generation ago, Majed Abdullah – later ranked No.3 in the voting for Asian Player of the (20th) Century – helped put Al-Nassr and Saudi Arabia on the football map. Ronaldo will undoubtedly raise the club’s profile even further, but is that what he really wanted? Don’t believe the PR spin that tells you so.