Alert in Europe, the reason why some clubs are afraid of Saudi Arabian teams

The map of world soccer changed in December 2022, when Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United to play for Saudi Arabia's Al-Nassr. The more than $200 million a year offered to the Portuguese striker was enough for him to agree to leave Europe for the first time and start a new stage in Asia.

This paved the way for many other top players to make the same decision and accept the multi-million dollar offers from Saudi Arabia. Since then Al-Nassr signed Sadio Mané, Seko Fofana, Marcelo Brozovic and Alex Telles.

Al-Ahli invested more than $140 million in the signings of Riyad Mahrez, Edouard Mendy, Frankc Kessie and Roberto Firmino. Al-Ittihad surprised everyone by convincing Karim Benzema to leave Real Madrid. He was joined by N'Golo Kanté, Fabinho and Jota. Al-Hilal were not far behind and added Neymar, Malcolm, Ruben Neves, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic and Kalidou Koulibaly. This shocked fans around the world and caused concern among Europe's top teams, who until now had always been the ones to keep the most important players.

But there is one detail that scares them even more: while the transfer window in Europe closes on September 1 at 23:59, Saudi Arabian clubs have until September 20 to continue signing players. So they could take stars from Europe and the clubs would have no chance to negotiate to sign replacements.

Some foresaw this

One of the clubs most affected by the Saudi Arabian offers was Liverpool, as they lost Roberto Firmino, Fabinho and Jordan Henderson this summer. When asked about this, manager Jurgen Klopp said: “The worst thing is that the transfer window in Saudi Arabia closes three weeks later than in Europe. FIFA and UEFA must find solutions to that. We will have to learn to deal with it.”