Saudi League thread

yumtum said:
Because he's been in football since a child, him earning £28k for the year he was at Celtic doesn't include his years as a Benfica player, if you can't fathom that he's already earning millions then it's pointless going down this route.

No doubt it's a seriously tempting offer, but I'm pretty sure he was talked about on here before, so I'm assuming he could have taken the path similar to Van Dijk, again, earning millions, at a certain point choosing more money over a better career is just a dumb move.

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Listen, I'll say it again, if you're close to retirement and you get offered crazy money then sure, why not, but at 24 you're pissing away key years to earn a couple more million than you already would have, simply saying its short sighted (same applies for Neves).
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You think he was on big money as a bit-part player in the years before he joined Celtic? From doing some pretty basic digging his salary at Benfica was around €3k a week between 2018 and 2020, while he was a bit part squad player. There are varying reports of what he earned during his two years out on loan at Valladolid and Celtic, averaging between €3k and €15k, before his big increase to the apparent £28k a week upon signing permanently for Celtic in 2022.

For purposes of this discussion, let's assume he earned the higher rate of €15k at both Valladolid and Celtic, even though that is highly unlikely.

Portugal's tax rate of 48% means of the €260k he earned between 2018 and 2020, he'd have likely seen roughly €135k (£116k). Spain's tax rate varies but the lowest he'd have faced on €15k a week (which to be clear, is likely a lot more than he was actually on) would have been 43%, he was there for 11 months so would have taken home roughly €410k (£352k) and for the 10 months on loan at Celtic, if we're assuming the top end of €15k a week again, then over that period he'd have paid 47% tax and have taken home €350k (£300k). And then in 22/23, you've said he earned £28k a week, so he'll have taken home roughly £780k after tax in the year just gone.

So you're looking at a maximum total actual income of just over £1.5m over the past 5 years. So yeah, I highly doubt he is a multi-millionaire.

By contrast, with his new deal he'll quite literally have received more money into his account by the end of August than he has done in the past 5 years put together. We're not talking about a player earning "a couple more million" we're talking about a player multiplying his take home pay by 13 times from circa £15k a week after tax to £192k tax free. Any player would find that level of increase difficult to turn down. It'd be like Casemiro receiving an offer of £2.1m a week for goodness sake.
 
JB7 said:
You think he was on big money as a bit-part player in the years before he joined Celtic? From doing some pretty basic digging his salary at Benfica was around €3k a week between 2018 and 2020, while he was a bit part squad player. There are varying reports of what he earned during his two years out on loan at Valladolid and Celtic, averaging between €3k and €15k, before his big increase to the apparent £28k a week upon signing permanently for Celtic in 2022.

For purposes of this discussion, let's assume he earned the higher rate of €15k at both Valladolid and Celtic, even though that is highly unlikely.

Portugal's tax rate of 48% means of the €260k he earned between 2018 and 2020, he'd have likely seen roughly €135k (£116k). Spain's tax rate varies but the lowest he'd have faced on €15k a week (which to be clear, is likely a lot more than he was actually on) would have been 43%, he was there for 11 months so would have taken home roughly €410k (£352k) and for the 10 months on loan at Celtic, if we're assuming the top end of €15k a week again, then over that period he'd have paid 47% tax and have taken home €350k (£300k). And then in 22/23, you've said he earned £28k a week, so he'll have taken home roughly £780k after tax in the year just gone.

So you're looking at a maximum total actual income of just over £1.5m over the past 5 years. So yeah, I highly doubt he is a multi-millionaire.

By contrast, with his new deal he'll quite literally have received more money into his account by the end of August than he has done in the past 5 years put together. We're not talking about a player earning "a couple more million" we're talking about a player multiplying his take home pay by 13 times from circa £15k a week after tax to £192k tax free. Any player would find that level of increase difficult to turn down. It'd be like Casemiro receiving an offer of £2.1m a week for goodness sake.
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Perry decent summation to be fair, but then you have image rights, boot deals etc, then you have investments, either way he's likely earned millions by tge times he's 24, and he's decided to throw away the best years of his career to earn more millions than he already would have.

I'll reiterate, I have no problem with oldies getting one last big payday, I also have no real problem with young ones doing it really, I just find it stupid for a player to cut his own top flight career short to earn a few more million than he would have anyway.
 
A funny thing that will remain to happen: all these players that are accepting money from one of the most harsh dictatorships will of course remain "woke", despite receiving millions of dollars from a blood regime. Defending human rights my arse. It's just for the resumé.
 
André Dominguez said:
A funny thing that will remain to happen: all these players that are accepting money from one of the most harsh dictatorships will of course remain "woke", despite receiving millions of dollars from a blood regime. Defending human rights my arse. It's just for the resumé.
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What better way to fight a regime than to drain it of its money and spend it yourself.
 
yumtum said:
Imagine being a multimillionaire by 24 then flushing your career down the drain for more money?

I can fully understand those at the end of their careers like Benzema etc topping up their coffers because they've been in the big league for more than a decade, but a player at the start of their career? Dumb move.
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Football fans seem to be under the impression that players have to play in decent leagues as some sort of obligation to us and make a fist of it there rather than treat it as a job where you earn money as part of doing something for a living.
 
matherto said:
Football fans seem to be under the impression that players have to play in decent leagues as some sort of obligation to us and make a fist of it there rather than treat it as a job where you earn money as part of doing something for a living.
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Now where exactly did I say he owes it to me to play in a better league? I simply said that I (my opinion) cannot understand why a professional footballer who's already made millions wants to sacrifice his best playing years to play in a terrible league just for more millions on top of his current millions?

If you're making £28k a week (he could have got a move to a bigger league for 2-3x that this summer) then money shouldn't be a worry to you, if it is then making 192k a week won't be enough either.

I'll say it one more time for those in the back, it's his decision which is completely fair enough, but I (again, my opinion) cannot understand why a footballer on the cusp of his peak would choose to go there.

At the end of the day I'm saying it's greed, and I'd understand being greedy if he was in the twilight of his career, but to piss away a career due to greed is stupid.
 
yumtum said:
Now where exactly did I say he owes it to me to play in a better league? I simply said that I (my opinion) cannot understand why a professional footballer who's already made millions wants to sacrifice his best playing years to play in a terrible league just for more millions on top of his current millions?

If you're making £28k a week (he could have got a move to a bigger league for 2-3x that this summer) then money shouldn't be a worry to you, if it is then making 192k a week won't be enough either.

I'll say it one more time for those in the back, it's his decision which is completely fair enough, but I (again, my opinion) cannot understand why a footballer on the cusp of his peak would choose to go there.

At the end of the day I'm saying it's greed, and I'd understand being greedy if he was in the twilight of his career, but to piss away a career due to greed is stupid.
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You might think you're set for life on 28k a week and that's more than likely true for most of us but once the trappings of a football career are over, what else is there but to spend what you've got? If you're accustomed to the lifestyle and you've got family, friends and other hangers on to cater for then you'll be burning through cash.

192k a week versus 28k a week seems like a very sound financial decision to me. That's more than likely enough for someone who's probably come from not much, like most footballers.
 
yumtum said:
Perry decent summation to be fair, but then you have image rights, boot deals etc, then you have investments, either way he's likely earned millions by tge times he's 24, and he's decided to throw away the best years of his career to earn more millions than he already would have.

I'll reiterate, I have no problem with oldies getting one last big payday, I also have no real problem with young ones doing it really, I just find it stupid for a player to cut his own top flight career short to earn a few more million than he would have anyway.
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He literally gave a best-case of how the player in question would have earned tops 1.5m (likely significantly less). Boot deals and image rights for players no one has ever heard are likely not in the millions. And who knows if he a) has invested and b) has invested rightly. Many people lose money investing.

At 1m net worth you are not even that rich. Essentially you can buy an apartment in a big city and that’s it. It won’t be enough to retire early for a start. At 10m per year for three years years you are very rich. Can buy a nice house anywhere you want, and have enough money to live a relatively lavish life indefinitely (for example if he invests 20m after buying house, cars etc, at 4% withdrawal for year, that is 800k/year. At 40% tax rate, that would still be around 40k/month). It is ‘feck you’ amount of money.

At the end of the day, this is not a generational talent who can win multiple UCLs or World Cups but an ok player who likely won’t ever make it to the top. And at the end of the day, this is just a job, it is hard to find someone who won’t jump at a 13x increase in salary.
 
Revan said:
He literally gave a best-case of how the player in question would have earned tops 1.5m (likely significantly less). Boot deals and image rights for players no one has ever heard are likely not in the millions. And who knows if he a) has invested and b) has invested rightly. Many people lose money investing.

At 1m net worth you are not even that rich. Essentially you can buy an apartment in a big city and that’s it. It won’t be enough to retire early for a start. At 10m per year for three years years you are very rich. Can buy a nice house anywhere you want, and have enough money to live a relatively lavish life indefinitely (for example if he invests 20m after buying house, cars etc, at 4% withdrawal for year, that is 800k/year. At 40% tax rate, that would still be around 40k/month). It is ‘feck you’ amount of money.

At the end of the day, this is not a generational talent who can win multiple UCLs or World Cups but an ok player who likely won’t ever make it to the top. And at the end of the day, this is just a job, it is hard to find someone who won’t jump at a 13x increase in salary.
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I said his wage guesstimate as pretty good, but that wasn't factoring other deals like boots and signing bonuses etc, so without that taken into account you want to reduce the decent summarisation made by thaat poster 33%? That's also factoring in that he hasn't been smart and hired lots of accountants to reduce his taxable income by a significant amount.

Either way, my point still stands, he's likely a multi millionaire at 24 years old, he already has "feck you" money and would like earn more than £28k if he moved to a better league.

On 28k a week you could buy one house a week and still have 10k+ left over, that's 52 houses for the year he was in Scotland, yielding a pretty decent return longeterm too.

Again, him wanting to trade the best years of his career for more money than he'd earn in a bigger league was completely his choice, and it doesn't bother me, just said it was a stupid career choice as an already wealthy footballer.

13x salary is great, and for the layman that would be the wisest choice, but he's already a millionaire, I just find the choice to throw away a top flight career for additional millions to be silly as he's already a millionaire and would continue to earn a bucket load of cash in a better league anyway.

You keep saying he's not a generational talent and you're right, but Van Dijk was in Scotland around the same age, who knows what might have happened with Jota if he moved to a more competitive league, he'd have easily tripled his salary moving to the PL for example and had the chance of catching the eye of some bigger clubs by the time he's 26/27.
 
matherto said:
You might think you're set for life on 28k a week and that's more than likely true for most of us but once the trappings of a football career are over, what else is there but to spend what you've got? If you're accustomed to the lifestyle and you've got family, friends and other hangers on to cater for then you'll be burning through cash.

192k a week versus 28k a week seems like a very sound financial decision to me. That's more than likely enough for someone who's probably come from not much, like most footballers.
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Probably because getting paid to play football for a living is a literal dream job for the vast majority of people. It's obviously incomparable to working in a boring finance job and moving for a bit more cash. In most cases, these footballers are earning obscene money anyway, so why not build an actual footballing legacy too while you earn your wads?
 
yumtum said:
I said his wage guesstimate as pretty good, but that wasn't factoring other deals like boots and signing bonuses etc, so without that taken into account you want to reduce the decent summarisation made by thaat poster 33%? That's also factoring in that he hasn't been smart and hired lots of accountants to reduce his taxable income by a significant amount.

Either way, my point still stands, he's likely a multi millionaire at 24 years old, he already has "feck you" money and would like earn more than £28k if he moved to a better league.

On 28k a week you could buy one house a week and still have 10k+ left over, that's 52 houses for the year he was in Scotland, yielding a pretty decent return longeterm too.
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1m is not ‘feck you’ money. It is essentially a 2 room apartment in second zone London.

I also find interesting how you have done the math here. Buying 52 houses/year in 28k/week before taxes (that’s like 16k or so after taxes or around 1m/year).
 
TrustInJanuzaj said:
Probably because getting paid to play football for a living is a literal dream job for the vast majority of people. It's obviously incomparable to working in a boring finance job and moving for a bit more cash. In most cases, these footballers are earning obscene money anyway, so why not build an actual footballing legacy too while you earn your wads?
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Because they don’t have to and they don’t want to?
 
Krny said:
What better way to fight a regime than to drain it of its money and spend it yourself.
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The money they are throwing at LIV Golf, the money the are throwing at football and other sporting or none sporting areas, all a little drop in the ocean too them

these regimes have Trillions of Trillions too spend, they aren’t in Debt like Countries like Ours, granted our economy is far superior but there readily available expenditure far out ways ours

It’ll tail off at some point but not because they have ran out of wonga, these things always tail off when targets have been achieved
 
Revan said:
1m is not ‘feck you’ money. It is essentially a 2 room apartment in second zone London.

I also find interesting how you have done the math here. Buying 52 houses/year in 28k/week before taxes (that’s like 16k or so after taxes or around 1m/year).
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Why are you saying he only has one million? You agreed that 1.5m was roughly correct before sponsorship and signing bonuses etc, so he's a multi millionaire already, we're going around in circles here - plus he was in Scotland, not London, and if you don't consider a multi millionaire who earns just under a million a year at £16k a week take home (if he was honest enough not to have offshore accounts etc) to have "feck you" money at the age of 24 then you've obviously lost the value of money yourself.

You're also assuming wealthy footballers don't have people to reduce the amount of tax they pay, I threw a house a week at you because you threw the 4% investment from his salary in Saudi, like it isn't possible to inest smartly on 28k a week.

You're also ignoring the fact he have moved for a big payrise in a better league.

He chose more millions over a top flight career, it's obviously his perogative (I can't believe the amount of times I'm having to state this) but he'll likely regret wasting the prime of his career in a sub standard league considering he'd be a multi millionaire regardless.
 
yumtum said:
Why are you saying he only has one million? You agreed that 1.5m was roughly correct before sponsorship and signing bonuses etc, so he's a multi millionaire already, we're going around in circles here - plus he was in Scotland, not London, and if you don't consider a multi millionaire who earns just under a million a year at £16k a week take home (if he was honest enough not to have offshore accounts etc) to have "feck you" money at the age of 24 then you've obviously lost the value of money yourself.

You're also assuming wealthy footballers don't have people to reduce the amount of tax they pay, I threw a house a week at you because you threw the 4% investment from his salary in Saudi, like it isn't possible to inest smartly on 28k a week.

You're also ignoring the fact he have moved for a big payrise in a better league.

He chose more millions over a top flight career, it's obviously his perogative (I can't believe the amount of times I'm having to state this) but he'll likely regret wasting the prime of his career in a sub standard league considering he'd be a multi millionaire regardless.
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Because if he has earned just 1.5m (which is likely an overestimate), he likely has less than that. You know people spend money. Especially young footballers who are known to spend a lot (nice cars etc). Shaq for example, spent his entire first year salary before the year ended.

I do not think there are many loopholes on salary, as far as I know there are none. It gets taxed immediately. Different when it comes to stock options etc.

Yes, he is 24 and for a 24 years old he is rich. But it is a short career, and he likely does not have many skills after that. It is unlikely that he’ll be a doctor or working at Google after his career is finished. So probably the money he will earn on his career is the vast majority of money he will earn on his life.

Investments are possible but we have no idea if he has any, or how good they are. Many people lose money on investments, for example in stock investments (not counting pensions) more lose money than win.

Finally, he will likely retire a multi-millionaire if he didn’t choose to play in Saudi Arabia. But retiring with 3 millions vs 30 millions is a massive massive difference in the quality of life and things he can do after that. At the end of the day it is a job, and there is no shame in choosing the job which gives the best reward. In fact, it would be idiotic to do otherwise (unless the player in question puts massive value in winning the Scottish league or not getting relegated in EPL when he would get transferred to Aston Villas of this world).
 
Just curious, will you guys be watching this?

I confess it was a bit difficult at times not to watch the last WC, but I feel zero interest in watching any saudi league matches.
 
maniak said:
Just curious, will you guys be watching this?

I confess it was a bit difficult at times not to watch the last WC, but I feel zero interest in watching any saudi league matches.
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No, I won't watch. I don't root for one of the teams, the quality will be poor and there is no player I am interested in watching.
However, I will watch Inter Miami since I love watching Messi.
 
maniak said:
Just curious, will you guys be watching this?

I confess it was a bit difficult at times not to watch the last WC, but I feel zero interest in watching any saudi league matches.
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Nah. No one worth watching .
 
Nah not for me there is nothing there to attract foreigners long term, emotional connections are ultimately formed with the teams not necessarily the players that represent them and much like China its just too artificial will kinda feel like a charity game i expect.
 
maniak said:
Just curious, will you guys be watching this?

I confess it was a bit difficult at times not to watch the last WC, but I feel zero interest in watching any saudi league matches.
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Where would one even catch the Saudi league? Are any of the UK broadcasters picking it up? I doubt many would go out of their to watch via dodgy streams but if it's being broadcast on UK channels, then I can imagine quite a few would at least be intrigued enough to watch a game or two.
 
Out of interest.

Are these reported salaries in SA tax free?

Earning 20m a year there vs maybe 4m a year in Europe. There's a huge difference there in terms of what you can do in life after football. Can understand why players would do it even just for a year or two.
 
Oranges038 said:
Out of interest.

Are these reported salaries in SA tax free?

Earning 20m a year there vs maybe 4m a year in Europe. There's a huge difference there in terms of what you can do in life after football. Can understand why players would do it even just for a year or two.
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Yep
 
maniak said:
Just curious, will you guys be watching this?

I confess it was a bit difficult at times not to watch the last WC, but I feel zero interest in watching any saudi league matches.
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I won't go out of my way to watch it but if it's on TV then sure why not. And if the league improves in quality (not just the imported players, the base level of the local players) then there will be some marquee games I'll watch.

I've found myself watching Ethiopian league games just because they were on my j̶a̶i̶l̶b̶r̶o̶k̶e̶n̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶c̶k̶ TV.
 
maniak said:
Just curious, will you guys be watching this?

I confess it was a bit difficult at times not to watch the last WC, but I feel zero interest in watching any saudi league matches.
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I might check it out if they make it really easy to get the content - like live stream for free across the world or a deal with netflix / prime / YouTube or something like that.
 
maniak said:
Just curious, will you guys be watching this?

I confess it was a bit difficult at times not to watch the last WC, but I feel zero interest in watching any saudi league matches.
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Nah. It's basically friendly games is how I will look at it. Players at the end of their careers going for a big pay day in an irrelevant league to just see out their career. Never care to watch pre season friendlies between big sides, so I don't see what will be interesting here.
 
I will watch some games if they are on when the other big leagues aren't
 
If they can get about 20 more big names in the league before it starts, it might be a fun watch for a week or two, but it's still going to be a long way off the quality required to be worth watching.
 
Pintu said:
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This is their best coup yet. SMS is one of the best players in the world, probably a top 5 midfielder in Europe and gets into any team out there. This is the first non washed player the Saudis have copped.

Great signing.
 
Can't quite understand what would make the Saudi league compelling despite some big names considering that Saudi PIF owns the four biggest clubs which are making the moves for these players.
That seems like a massive conflict of interest and I can only imagine the corruption that will be going on under the table. For next season they can decided that Ronaldo HAS to win the league which would garner a lot of eyes on the league, so who has the ability to stop such from happening?
 
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