Saudi Arabia’s football project: is it working?

Since Cristiano Ronaldo touched down in Riyadh in January 2023, the Saudi Pro League has spent more than $1 billion on transfer fees in a single window, pulling in names that once seemed unthinkable at this level of football. The signings were loud, the numbers were staggering, and the message from the Public Investment Fund was clear: the league was no longer content to exist on the fringes of global football.

Three years on, with Saudi Arabia confirmed as host of the 2034 World Cup, those signings look less like an end point and more like the opening move in a much longer plan. Fans tracking online wagering across domestic and European football will have watched the Saudi project with curiosity, less because of which individuals moved there and more because of what the whole exercise reveals about where football’s commercial power is shifting.

In this article, we look at what the signings have actually delivered, what they mean for local player development, and whether the Saudi model can build something that lasts beyond the World Cup.

What the signings delivered on the pitch

The headline names arrived with headline prices. Neymar, Karim Benzema, N'Golo Kante, Ruben Neves, and a roster of others followed Ronaldo east, and the early results in terms of media coverage were exactly what Saudi football wanted. The league was on the back pages, at least briefly.

On the pitch, it has been a different story. Neymar's time in Saudi Arabia has been defined almost entirely by injury, limiting him to a handful of appearances across two seasons. Benzema departed Al-Ittihad before his contract expired, with reports of fractured relationships behind the scenes. The league’s average attendance this season sits at around 7,880, which puts it roughly level with Peru’s top flight in terms of domestic support.

What the signings did do was force a conversation about the long-term direction of football’s commercial market. European clubs had to sharpen their salary structures. Agents started using Saudi interest as leverage. The league inserted itself into the transfer ecosystem in a way that could not be ignored, even if the football itself has not yet matched the ambition of the investment.

The local talent question

The more complicated argument sits below the surface. Saudi Arabia’s national team reached the last 16 at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, beating Argentina 2-1 in the group stage in one of the tournament’s most celebrated upsets. That result was treated domestically as a sign of progress, and it came from a squad built mostly from the domestic league.

The challenge since then has been whether the arrival of so many high-profile foreign players has helped or hindered local development. The argument in favour is that training alongside Champions League-level players raises standards. The counter-argument is that squad spots and minutes that once went to developing Saudi players are now going to ageing imports who were not signed to develop anyone.

The Saudi Football Federation has rules in place limiting the number of foreign players per squad, and clubs are required to include a minimum number of local players in their matchday registrations. Whether those regulations are enough to protect real development pathways, rather than meeting the minimum on paper, is a question the federation will need to answer with more urgency as 2034 approaches.

Qatar set the template, and the warning

2022 World Cup in Qatar was delivered successfully from an organisational standpoint, with eight stadiums built or upgraded across a compact country and the tournament running without major incident. Qatar used the event to accelerate its football infrastructure and raise the profile of the Qatar Stars League.

Saudi Arabia is considerably larger than Qatar, with a population of around 35 million and a football culture that predates the current investment wave. That provides a more credible foundation for hosting the tournament. But the gap between spending on high-profile signings and spending on academies, coaching structures, and youth pathways remains a concern for anyone who believes the 2034 World Cup can be transformative rather than spectacular on the surface.

FIFA’s expanded 48-team tournament represents a new model for the competition. Saudi Arabia will be expected to build on that template for 2034, with a squad capable of competing with the world’s best on home soil, rather than relying on a single outstanding result in the group stage.