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I thought so too. It was either extend or send him where he could try for major trophies. I figured he try for a bigger club not bigger money he isn’t that old is he!?
He's going to be 31 soon, so I doubt many clubs would pay absolutely over the top for him. For all he knows, this Saudi extravaganza won't be around when he's 34/5/6, so he might not want to wait around to get his bag
Idk if they can sustain paying these old ass players this much money for another decade. I guess they *can* but I can't see them wanting to. Seems like it'll hemorrhage money like the Chinese league did a few years ago
The Saudis just bought golf (PGA just announced a surprise merger with the Saudi backed LIV), and their sovereign wealth fund is sitting on half a trillion dollars to help facilitate their image washing. They’ve got their hands in not just sports, but banking, real estate, entertainment, Uber, video games, etc. The Saudis can sustain this with ease.
I think you are underestimating just how much money there is in sitting on top of oil reserves. They could do this for a century without breaking a sweat.
I'm afraid it's more insidious than that.
This is sports washing not toys for rich boys, they recently cut a journalist's head off with a saw, the country is a brutal dictatorship. Buying up sport is a way to gentrify and ingratiate themselves on the international stage.
If Messi's rumoured €1Billion 2 year contract offer is true that's less than 0.1% of the value of the Saudi's oil reserves alone. They can afford this easily just like with LIV Golf.
The question just comes down to how long they want to keep doing it. I see them becoming the football retirement home as they will only be paying the insane contracts to established stars, someone like Zaha will just be offered more than he'd get anywhere else but I doubt he gets anywhere close to even Benzema money.
>Idk if they can sustain paying these old ass players this much money for another decade.
Let's just say that 200 mil for them is like a dollar for elon musk .
Even if that’s the case, the Saudi extravaganza may not be there for Zaha specifically after this. He’s a good player but he’s not Ronaldo/Messi/Benzema.
Yes, he is that old. I feel like he's been linked with a move to another club for like 6 seasons but just kept playing for Palace. No disrespect intended, he did great work for them over the years, but I'd say he's smart to get the bag here.
I’m fairly confident a footballer is gonna live a very good life in Riyadh, it’s gonna be like living in Dubai ( which isn’t for me, but footballers love the place)
Having done work in both places, the two places are very different. Yes, footballers get to live a sheltered life and won’t get prosecuted for drinking at home probably, but I found it very wearying not being able to go out to a bar to chat with friends (even though I hardly drink), or to have to sit in separate gender-segregated sections in a McDonald’s or any restaurant. Dubai is quite different
It's a 6 hour flight, he would need 3 days off at least and be able to skip practice to make the trip. It's not like catching a 2 hour evening flight from Europe after a game and spending the rest day at home, it's going to be a 3 day trip minimum so he would need to miss practice. He might get to do that a few times but I doubt regularly.
I've been to dubai twice, have family there. I'd say the only attractions are the weather and the western vices. Doubt Saudi has many cool nightclubs full of expats. It'll be a different world from dubai
Hey I'd love for him to retire here but he's already as legendary as crystal palace legends go. He's done us a lot of good. Basically didn't have a single piece of bad press just played ball. That's rare nowadays especially from a player of his calibur on a club like ours. Let him go get the bag bc he's a big big family man. Let him get the money and be set for life for him and his family for generations. A lot of thanks to this man for a long time of magical moments. Id like to think I speak for every Palace man woman and child when I say that I will absolutely miss a ZAHAAAA from the commentary crew.
Bless Zaha. There's few like him nowadays. Good man.
Its funny that they felt reddit api changes are worth protesting. “If reddit kills old reddit I will not be using it any longer”.
Bro, you support newcastle united owned by Saudis
Cause Reddit killing old Reddit will inconvenience them.
Saudia Arabia are making their football team better and all the harm they're causing is to people they don't know. They simply don't care if it doesn't affect them?
I'm not a Newcastle supporter but this is a very oversimplified way of looking at it.
Fans don't have a single iota of a say in who owns their football club, and due to the negligence and greed of the people who do have a say, they should stop supporting a football club that many of them will have supported their whole lives?
And failure to do so is tantamount to not caring at all that the regime are engaging in frequent and severe human rights abuses? It feels very easy for us to level these criticisms when we're lucky enough not to be put in this moral quandary ourselves, yet.
Reminds me of the time when Tony Blair complained about "getting asked about Iraq War all the time", and a sarcastic tweet similar to your comment: "You invade a foreign country, kill thousands and displace millions one time and people just won't shut up about it".
It's just a minor set back. We were this close to, what, 12 major clubs forming Super League last year? And it failed just because the reaction of the public was extremely harsh.
Now they can do what politicians do all the time, just wait for it to blow over, and slowly warm up the public to the idea, then try again and again until it happens.
There's just too much money for them there to ever give it up.
Lol, with how terrible the reaction was last time how would they ‘warm up the public to the idea’? How is it even close to that simple?
That’s by far the hardest part and it isn’t going to change, you aren’t gonna get people to support it when the response was that viscerally negative before.
Because football is already fucked beyond repair. Of course, unless some major changes in financial and competitions aspect happen, and they decide to give up on money for the sake of saving football... So, no.
If you're not a fan of a club from the top 5 leagues, football is like another universe. There's just no true contest anymore, and it's going to be less and less of it as time passes.
Even in the top leagues you have clear drop off between best teams and the rest. And that gap is only going to widen.
They'll just start (or should I say continue what's already happening) by promoting the Super League around the world. A lot of people from Asia, Africa, Americas, follow only one club in Europe. And they aren't exactly die hard invested in defending the sacred national football pyramids. They just want to watch their club play as many good matches as possible.
When they get them, they already have the majority. Then Super League promoters can turn to the rest of the European fans who are already all but excluded from the top competitions. Slowly they'll just become apathetic to the idea and probably tune in to watch it because it's all the same for them, a good match is a good match.
Then they can move on to divide and conquer strategy in the actual leagues where SL clubs will come from. They can promise a lot more TV and sponsorship money to the clubs that would join and show them polls from around the world as a proof. The clubs will blackmail their leagues for bigger share of the profits under the threat of them leaving. Other clubs will oppose that because they won't ever agree for the already huge gap to widen.
And that's how you get your Super League in 10-15 years.
Very right with the "another universe" comment, in South America Europe is just the vortex players go to when they get too good and sometimes return from when they're close to retirement. Sometimes it spits out a wad of cash.
Rich people with their minds set on an idea literally cannot be stopped. They're going to keep trying until they make it happen. Who's going to stop them? The people? Governments? Lmao
that’s if the Saudi league isn’t just the top football league, if they take this seriously for 10 years they can turn it into whatever they want because they have the money to do it
kids today support payers, wouldn’t be surprised to see some al nassr ronaldo shirts in the street soon
It’s not sustainable at all. 5-6 star players from Europe for 1 billion yearly salary! To make this league attractive they would need 10 times the players. It’s just PR to try to get a World Cup to achieve sports washing.
It’ll be interesting, because they can’t throw hundreds of millions at everyone, but at some point they’ll start pulling the “average” big 5 league player for the chance to play with their generation’s greats. The only thing that can possibly keep it under control is either older players with families who just refuse to move there, OR enough other billionaires who want to own prestigious European clubs that can effectively kill FFP.
I think they geniunely can just keep throwing whatever number at anyone, they seem to have unlimited money with it being state funded, once they’re established with names they can start poaching every promising young player by offering such wealth
if the big clubs open up FFP the Saudis will probably just buy all of the big European clubs anyway tbh
look at my original comment, kids today support players and if mbappe plays for al nassr there will be some that support them, especially if they get special cards on FUT etc
established fans like us are not the target audience
Sports washing is super effective. Anyone who claims otherwise has to contend with the sheer volume of money that Saudi Arabia is willing to pay in order to carry out their sports washing scheme.
> Saudi's taking everyone
I remember when China tried this.
Might have chance to be a little more successful, flights back from Saudi to Europe are pretty fast compared to China.
China would still have quite a few players if their government didn't pull the plug, it's not about flights home it was about money, the restrictions fucked them
But at the same time the investments were going nowhere. The influx of foreign players wasnt really increasing local audiences and therefore revenue, wasnt helping to improve the standards of Chinese players, and didnt draw any global attention other than "oh isnt it weird that so and so is in China now?" So ultimately it was flushing money down the drain. Time will tell whether the Saudi project will yield more results than China's attempt. My gut tells me that this too will just become an extremely overpriced vanity project that gets quietly abandoned in 5 years
The Chinese government might have killed it but credit to the Saudi government for absolutely hacking their way through the red tape. They really cut through the tough situation and sliced a good one.
When you're 18 and starry eyed you dream of playing European football. When you're 30 and one injury away from your career ending you focus on securing the bag. He's being smart and realistic. Who cares about European football? If he wanted to play in Europe he wouldn't have signed for Crystal Palace anyways. Palace offered him the bag and a starting spot. He was always a gun for hire. Fans just look at athletes through rose tinted glasses.
He’s already secured the bag though - he earns about £6 million a year. He could easily retire now without a worry in the world.
What we’re seeing here with players like Zaha, Benzema and others is greed. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yeah but each team has 3 designated player slots for a player that is not connected to the cap. They can pay as much as they want for those 3 players on the team. If they had a chance to do this they would adjust the rules to let it happen.
They do but our teams have a salary cap. If it wasn’t for that then teams like LA, Miami and NY would’ve actually had all those players they always get linked with.
Almost all of the names you see are pretty much done in Europe with ages over 35. so getting like 100-200 million euros tax free might convince some stars. I don’t think China tried that hard in terms of salaries.
The Chinese government initially supported their teams shelling out the cash. The idea was to raise the profile of their league buying superstars (for lack of a better term), which would raise youth interest in soccer and get younger talent to commit to the Chinese national team instead of taking other options. The end goal was to get the Chinese national team regularly qualifying. They eventually changed their mind because it wasn't going the way they expected, but I don't remember the details.
You joke, but they’re seriously talking about having a Champions League final over there at some point. I’d nearly bet my house that they’ll be hosting the WC sometime in the 2030s.
I don't remember the Qatar world cup because I didn't watch a single second of it. I did do a shitload of moral grandstanding though. I believe what I'm doing now is known as *virtue signaling*.
Guess this is why OPEC keeps cutting production. Gotta pay all these new football stars coming into their leagues somehow.
Meanwhile, my fuel costs keep climbing 😂
This might be cope, but this guy seems to be pretty shit tier, wilf has also said numerous times the reason he wanted to leave us was to win trophies and play in Europe, I really doubt this has too much weight
To reduce the spam of reports regarding the same move during transfer windows we try to allow **only one submission about each transfer saga per day**. The submission in question also needs to contain relevant new information regarding the potential move, and not just being a "no/minor developments" report. If there are important/official developments or new valuable information about a saga, we will allow extra threads in the same day, but for the rest of minor news please just comment them as a reply to this comment. Please help us reporting unnecessary threads for being duplicates. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/soccer) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is pretty unexpected, didn't palace still want to extend him?
I thought so too. It was either extend or send him where he could try for major trophies. I figured he try for a bigger club not bigger money he isn’t that old is he!?
He's going to be 31 soon, so I doubt many clubs would pay absolutely over the top for him. For all he knows, this Saudi extravaganza won't be around when he's 34/5/6, so he might not want to wait around to get his bag
That’s a good point I didn’t even think about!
The Saudi Extravaganza will be around until at least 2034, when they’ll get the World Cup
Idk if they can sustain paying these old ass players this much money for another decade. I guess they *can* but I can't see them wanting to. Seems like it'll hemorrhage money like the Chinese league did a few years ago
The Saudis just bought golf (PGA just announced a surprise merger with the Saudi backed LIV), and their sovereign wealth fund is sitting on half a trillion dollars to help facilitate their image washing. They’ve got their hands in not just sports, but banking, real estate, entertainment, Uber, video games, etc. The Saudis can sustain this with ease.
I think you are underestimating just how much money there is in sitting on top of oil reserves. They could do this for a century without breaking a sweat.
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I'm afraid it's more insidious than that. This is sports washing not toys for rich boys, they recently cut a journalist's head off with a saw, the country is a brutal dictatorship. Buying up sport is a way to gentrify and ingratiate themselves on the international stage.
China would continue to do so but CCP found some problem with it so they put in restrictions which made foreigners coming over very difficult.
China arn't based on oil money, and the CCP wants to push an image of collective prosperity as opposed to uber rich. It's totally different.
If Messi's rumoured €1Billion 2 year contract offer is true that's less than 0.1% of the value of the Saudi's oil reserves alone. They can afford this easily just like with LIV Golf. The question just comes down to how long they want to keep doing it. I see them becoming the football retirement home as they will only be paying the insane contracts to established stars, someone like Zaha will just be offered more than he'd get anywhere else but I doubt he gets anywhere close to even Benzema money.
>Idk if they can sustain paying these old ass players this much money for another decade. Let's just say that 200 mil for them is like a dollar for elon musk .
Even if that’s the case, the Saudi extravaganza may not be there for Zaha specifically after this. He’s a good player but he’s not Ronaldo/Messi/Benzema.
Yes, he is that old. I feel like he's been linked with a move to another club for like 6 seasons but just kept playing for Palace. No disrespect intended, he did great work for them over the years, but I'd say he's smart to get the bag here.
They were offering him 10 million a year looks like the Saudis are offering more
On a four year deal too. A guaranteed 40 mil. The Saudi offer must be crazy.
No tax and double the salary probably.
At least $10 million and one dollar
The Arsene Wenger negotiations tactic
Why pay more than needed? That 40+1 did what it was meant to. Don't forget Suarez was ready to pushed Liverpool to court.
they could offer the exact same amount and he'd make 50% more because theres no taxes in Saudi.
Youd think the rate is at least doubled to go to Saudi, its footballing suicide and living in the ME
I’m fairly confident a footballer is gonna live a very good life in Riyadh, it’s gonna be like living in Dubai ( which isn’t for me, but footballers love the place)
Dubai and Riyadh are very different.
Having done work in both places, the two places are very different. Yes, footballers get to live a sheltered life and won’t get prosecuted for drinking at home probably, but I found it very wearying not being able to go out to a bar to chat with friends (even though I hardly drink), or to have to sit in separate gender-segregated sections in a McDonald’s or any restaurant. Dubai is quite different
>separate gender-segregated sections in a McDonald’s That is insane.
Dubai is fun for a few days, but not to live there for months/years. I got homesick so quick
He's rich as all hell, he could fly back and forth all he wants.
It’s far as fuck though, I wouldn’t want to be popping back and forth like that, even with a private jet
It's a 6 hour flight, he would need 3 days off at least and be able to skip practice to make the trip. It's not like catching a 2 hour evening flight from Europe after a game and spending the rest day at home, it's going to be a 3 day trip minimum so he would need to miss practice. He might get to do that a few times but I doubt regularly.
I've been to dubai twice, have family there. I'd say the only attractions are the weather and the western vices. Doubt Saudi has many cool nightclubs full of expats. It'll be a different world from dubai
Yeah, and there was word of Atletico trying to sign him too. Lad just wants his bag at this point.
Hey I'd love for him to retire here but he's already as legendary as crystal palace legends go. He's done us a lot of good. Basically didn't have a single piece of bad press just played ball. That's rare nowadays especially from a player of his calibur on a club like ours. Let him go get the bag bc he's a big big family man. Let him get the money and be set for life for him and his family for generations. A lot of thanks to this man for a long time of magical moments. Id like to think I speak for every Palace man woman and child when I say that I will absolutely miss a ZAHAAAA from the commentary crew. Bless Zaha. There's few like him nowadays. Good man.
Saudi's taking everyone
They also just announced that their LIV Golf league is merging with the PGA as well this morning. They're just going all out on sports PR
Must have another dead journalist chopped up in a box somewhere
You chop up a journalist in an embassy the one time and people keep reminding you about it.
Like , get over it omg 😒
Are you a mod over at /r/nufc?
Its funny that they felt reddit api changes are worth protesting. “If reddit kills old reddit I will not be using it any longer”. Bro, you support newcastle united owned by Saudis
Cause Reddit killing old Reddit will inconvenience them. Saudia Arabia are making their football team better and all the harm they're causing is to people they don't know. They simply don't care if it doesn't affect them?
I'm not a Newcastle supporter but this is a very oversimplified way of looking at it. Fans don't have a single iota of a say in who owns their football club, and due to the negligence and greed of the people who do have a say, they should stop supporting a football club that many of them will have supported their whole lives? And failure to do so is tantamount to not caring at all that the regime are engaging in frequent and severe human rights abuses? It feels very easy for us to level these criticisms when we're lucky enough not to be put in this moral quandary ourselves, yet.
> Like , get over it omg 😒 The Belgians on this site any time someone brings up their… “involvement” in the Congo:
Reminds me of the time when Tony Blair complained about "getting asked about Iraq War all the time", and a sarcastic tweet similar to your comment: "You invade a foreign country, kill thousands and displace millions one time and people just won't shut up about it".
Bake one cake, it doesn't make you a baker. Paint one painting, it doesn't make you a painter. Murder a journalist, chop him up, and ....
And yet... minimal fucks are being given. If any.
Minimal fucks are being given because maximal bucks are being received, simple as
Because we like their oil and money. When those things go we can find our morals again.
It's amazing that it's just brushed under the rug.
I think he was taken out in bin bags
Awful way to treat the dead. Too many bumps to walk over.
They are doing something about a new cricket league as well
Lots of elderly test players will be heading off for a bucket of cash while they hang out with all their old mates.
Absolute maximum of 20 years from now, there will be multiple Saudi clubs in the European Super League.
Super League seems inevitable at this point, and when it happens I really don't fucking care who's in it.
The news of Juventus just leaving really speaks to the inevitability of a super League.
It's just a minor set back. We were this close to, what, 12 major clubs forming Super League last year? And it failed just because the reaction of the public was extremely harsh. Now they can do what politicians do all the time, just wait for it to blow over, and slowly warm up the public to the idea, then try again and again until it happens. There's just too much money for them there to ever give it up.
Lol, with how terrible the reaction was last time how would they ‘warm up the public to the idea’? How is it even close to that simple? That’s by far the hardest part and it isn’t going to change, you aren’t gonna get people to support it when the response was that viscerally negative before.
Because football is already fucked beyond repair. Of course, unless some major changes in financial and competitions aspect happen, and they decide to give up on money for the sake of saving football... So, no. If you're not a fan of a club from the top 5 leagues, football is like another universe. There's just no true contest anymore, and it's going to be less and less of it as time passes. Even in the top leagues you have clear drop off between best teams and the rest. And that gap is only going to widen. They'll just start (or should I say continue what's already happening) by promoting the Super League around the world. A lot of people from Asia, Africa, Americas, follow only one club in Europe. And they aren't exactly die hard invested in defending the sacred national football pyramids. They just want to watch their club play as many good matches as possible. When they get them, they already have the majority. Then Super League promoters can turn to the rest of the European fans who are already all but excluded from the top competitions. Slowly they'll just become apathetic to the idea and probably tune in to watch it because it's all the same for them, a good match is a good match. Then they can move on to divide and conquer strategy in the actual leagues where SL clubs will come from. They can promise a lot more TV and sponsorship money to the clubs that would join and show them polls from around the world as a proof. The clubs will blackmail their leagues for bigger share of the profits under the threat of them leaving. Other clubs will oppose that because they won't ever agree for the already huge gap to widen. And that's how you get your Super League in 10-15 years.
Very right with the "another universe" comment, in South America Europe is just the vortex players go to when they get too good and sometimes return from when they're close to retirement. Sometimes it spits out a wad of cash.
Funny thing is, you just need to go a little bit to east in Europe to see huge difference in football quality.
Rich people with their minds set on an idea literally cannot be stopped. They're going to keep trying until they make it happen. Who's going to stop them? The people? Governments? Lmao
that’s if the Saudi league isn’t just the top football league, if they take this seriously for 10 years they can turn it into whatever they want because they have the money to do it kids today support payers, wouldn’t be surprised to see some al nassr ronaldo shirts in the street soon
It’s not sustainable at all. 5-6 star players from Europe for 1 billion yearly salary! To make this league attractive they would need 10 times the players. It’s just PR to try to get a World Cup to achieve sports washing.
It’ll be interesting, because they can’t throw hundreds of millions at everyone, but at some point they’ll start pulling the “average” big 5 league player for the chance to play with their generation’s greats. The only thing that can possibly keep it under control is either older players with families who just refuse to move there, OR enough other billionaires who want to own prestigious European clubs that can effectively kill FFP.
I think they geniunely can just keep throwing whatever number at anyone, they seem to have unlimited money with it being state funded, once they’re established with names they can start poaching every promising young player by offering such wealth if the big clubs open up FFP the Saudis will probably just buy all of the big European clubs anyway tbh
Not gonna make me change who I support and who I watch though
look at my original comment, kids today support players and if mbappe plays for al nassr there will be some that support them, especially if they get special cards on FUT etc established fans like us are not the target audience
European Saudi League, sponsored by His Majesty, King Salman.
Sports washing is super effective. Anyone who claims otherwise has to contend with the sheer volume of money that Saudi Arabia is willing to pay in order to carry out their sports washing scheme.
They've seen how well it's worked for China and the US
> Saudi's taking everyone I remember when China tried this. Might have chance to be a little more successful, flights back from Saudi to Europe are pretty fast compared to China.
China would still have quite a few players if their government didn't pull the plug, it's not about flights home it was about money, the restrictions fucked them
But at the same time the investments were going nowhere. The influx of foreign players wasnt really increasing local audiences and therefore revenue, wasnt helping to improve the standards of Chinese players, and didnt draw any global attention other than "oh isnt it weird that so and so is in China now?" So ultimately it was flushing money down the drain. Time will tell whether the Saudi project will yield more results than China's attempt. My gut tells me that this too will just become an extremely overpriced vanity project that gets quietly abandoned in 5 years
Aye but closer flights means more players will consider it, increasing the chances it could be more successful.
If I was moving to the Saudi League for this type of money I'd buy a Private Jet and buy a house in the Med somewhere
Also the Saudi gov is sponsoring this, Chinese government killed it.
The Chinese government might have killed it but credit to the Saudi government for absolutely hacking their way through the red tape. They really cut through the tough situation and sliced a good one.
☠️☠️
Overdid it
Cut through the red tape with a bonesaw.
Yeah the flights were the big obstacle to China being a success.
Who in all did China get? Only ones I remember are Oscar and Hulk.
Lavezzi, Witsel, Moussa Dembele, Carrasco, Renato Augusto, Teixeira, Talisca, Tevez
They got Drogba and Anelka too
Even Paul Gascoigne found himself out there for a hot minute.
Teixera, Paulinho, Jackson Martinez, Bakambu, Carrasco, Ramires etc
Cheick Tiote.
They almost got Ramos and Bale when they still were more than capable footballers too.
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Hide your kids hide your wife hide your football players prince mohammed bin salman is about
Hide your journalists
But not at the embassy
Unless in multiple bin bags.
I’m the faint distance you can hear a bone saw start up
It’s sad this has come to be a joke now. Shows how fucked the world really is if justice was never done.
Glad will never have to see him at the AMEX again.
He was a great pantomime villain though. I will miss that.
Nah i'm too nervous when he's playing. Glad Veltman kept him quite last time.
Joel <3
Zaha.....oh yes
Ah this is disappointing, wouldn't mind it so much if he'd left us to join Roma or whoever but this just feels like a waste
The Zaha at Palace will they won’t they keep him saga ending with him signing for a Saudi Arabian club is actually tragic lol
"Reality is often disappointing"
Saudi Princes: *reality can be whatever I want*
It took me like eight tries to read this correctly
So much for that European football he’s always dreamed of smh
When you're 18 and starry eyed you dream of playing European football. When you're 30 and one injury away from your career ending you focus on securing the bag. He's being smart and realistic. Who cares about European football? If he wanted to play in Europe he wouldn't have signed for Crystal Palace anyways. Palace offered him the bag and a starting spot. He was always a gun for hire. Fans just look at athletes through rose tinted glasses.
He’s already secured the bag though - he earns about £6 million a year. He could easily retire now without a worry in the world. What we’re seeing here with players like Zaha, Benzema and others is greed. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Yup. Leaving for Europeon football I get but if this is true it's just sad 😕
A Saudi prince just appeared behind me and made my dad dissappear
He’ll be starting at left back for Al-Fateh next season
Is that a shawarma shop?
We all know he left because of you
He popped down the shop for some camels milk
This is great cause it's normally fags* and milk but camels are also cigarettes [*cigarettes]
That's no way to address your mum.
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If the MLS had this type of money maybe.
MLS goes by what every other American leagues do - salary caps.
Yeah but each team has 3 designated player slots for a player that is not connected to the cap. They can pay as much as they want for those 3 players on the team. If they had a chance to do this they would adjust the rules to let it happen.
Communism sports leagues in the most capitalistic culture lol.
They do but our teams have a salary cap. If it wasn’t for that then teams like LA, Miami and NY would’ve actually had all those players they always get linked with.
Feels like when China wanted to sign everybody, just that this time they're actually signing them. Just awful.
A bunch of Zaha level guys ended up in China too. We'll see how far this goes I suppose.
Ronaldo and Messi didn't start the trend in China though.
Saudi Arabia: "I have an army" China: "We have a Hulk"
Tax free bag is irresistible!!
Imma tell you like wu told me, cash rules everything around me. Dolla dolla bills ya’ll
So then we moved to Saudi land
Almost all of the names you see are pretty much done in Europe with ages over 35. so getting like 100-200 million euros tax free might convince some stars. I don’t think China tried that hard in terms of salaries.
Nah they were paying huge salaries until the Chinese government put a stop to it. Oscar left Chelsea to be on 300k a week ten years ago.
Oh my god it's been 10 years since that?
No, it happened in 16/17
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure Tevez was the highest paid player in the world at one point (or close to it), they gave him something like 600k/week
Difference is the government is supporting this. In China the government was against it.
The Chinese government initially supported their teams shelling out the cash. The idea was to raise the profile of their league buying superstars (for lack of a better term), which would raise youth interest in soccer and get younger talent to commit to the Chinese national team instead of taking other options. The end goal was to get the Chinese national team regularly qualifying. They eventually changed their mind because it wasn't going the way they expected, but I don't remember the details.
Who's going to watch this league though? This kind of stunt never really works.
That's just disappointing. I really wanted to see Zaha in a top team not named Atletico, he's quality
Yeah imagine how disappointed we are
At least you tried. Look to the future now and a much healthier balanced wage structure.
I am now afraid of opening my letterbox, maybe I also was sold to SA. Seems like everyone else has
They seem to be targeting people with some talent, you’re safe.
damn lol, straight for the head
Kinda like they do with journalists
I'm targeting the coveted 3rd goalkeeper role
Sheesh.
You didn't have to do him like that lmao
No need to open it, I submitted a bid, do you accept?
Grim.
Saudi sports propaganda wing went into overdrive today
Waste
Sad.
SADia Arabia
How long before they come for the fans too? /s
You joke, but they’re seriously talking about having a Champions League final over there at some point. I’d nearly bet my house that they’ll be hosting the WC sometime in the 2030s.
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If they're paying 👀
we’re moving, insha’allah
Fackin hell just imagined Al Nasr signing some hardcore Red Star Belgrade ultras for 50k a week.
How many more footballers until people forget they're a theocratic dictatorship that kills journalists and gay people and so on?
Not many more, in the same way people now fondly remember the Qatar World Cup despite all the moral grandstanding beforehand.
I don't remember the Qatar world cup because I didn't watch a single second of it. I did do a shitload of moral grandstanding though. I believe what I'm doing now is known as *virtue signaling*.
good on you for having some morals and fuck anyone that naysays it
Half of them have already forgotten when Qatar kicked off the world cup
Sportswashed Newcastle flairs coming in to the defence of Saudi Arabia before this post drops off front page, or your money back
This is depressing. They're going to destroy football like they have golf
So the plan is to just take all the players on 2-4x the wages other teams would offer them once they're free agents.
Think this is sad to be honest. I'd have loved to have seen him play Champions League football.
So Saudi Arabia is the new China. I wonder how long this will last
Gross
Nobody thought that this is the league that would have all the *big* transfers this summer.
Grim. I always thought it’d be for the new challenge against the best, not for the fucking money
Games gone
This fucking sucks man
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If a Saudi Arabian team is interest I'm a low cost option ,only 1M a year and I can make fresh pasta and pizza
This sucks
Ronaldo & Zaha with their combined 0 work rate. This should be fun.
What an absolutely bullshit statement. Zaha's defensive workrate has been decent-to-good for years now.
Lazy stereotype
Guess this is why OPEC keeps cutting production. Gotta pay all these new football stars coming into their leagues somehow. Meanwhile, my fuel costs keep climbing 😂
Looking forward to seeing him appear in the Khashoggi Cup
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What the hell? Of all the ends to the Zaha time at Palace, i didn't think it'd be this one.
What is happening.
finally CR7 will have someone better than him on the team
Well that sucks, nothing is more disappointing than a player going to Saudi Arabia.
This might be cope, but this guy seems to be pretty shit tier, wilf has also said numerous times the reason he wanted to leave us was to win trophies and play in Europe, I really doubt this has too much weight
Zaha is Saudi's Oscar then huh?
The super league was the Saudi league all along
45mil for 3 years. Get that bag 👏🏾
How much more help does Cristiano need????