Saudi Arabia’s sports minister announced on Monday that the country’s sovereign wealth fund was keeping 75% of the capital of the four main national league soccer teams. Suddenly, the Public Investment Fund will inject a huge amount of money into these teams and the Saudi League itself, which will go from receiving 120 million dollars a year to quadruple the budget, up to 480 million. The president of the investment fund is none other than the crown prince himself, Muhammad bin Salman. With these aids it is not surprising that figures like Cristiano Ronaldo or Karim Benzema can be signed and that the rich Arabs can dream of bringing together Leo Messi, Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets in the same team. While in Europe or South America, the continents where there is more passion for sport, the clubs are financially suffocated, in Saudi Arabia the teams do not know what to do to invest all their money.
Saudi Arabia’s strategy is to use oil revenues to become an influential power in the world that goes far beyond its regional space. Football is only a small part of this strategy, but it is the great showcase. The Arabs are aware of this and have already won the organization of this year’s Club World Championship and aspire to host the World Cup in 2030. The question to be asked is simple: will petrodollars eventually denature football? Will the best players end up in second division leagues but earning astronomical sums? The reality is that a large financial investment is not always a guarantee of success, and if not let them tell Paris Saint-Germain, which receives injections of millions from Qatar but does not know what it is to win a Champions League.
In Spain, there is a fact that is worth noting: the last five teams in the classification of the League that has just ended – Valencia, Almeria, Valladolid, Espanyol and Elche – are managed by foreign capital that has invested a lot of money but without getting good results. So there is still hope. We already knew that money does not bring happiness. Now we can also add that it is not synonymous with success, no matter how many petrodollars one wants to invest.
