Three years ago, Cristiano Ronaldo stunned the sporting world by joining Al-Nassr. Six months later, the Portuguese trailblazer was joined in the Saudi Pro League by a number of high-profile players, including Karim Benzema, Neymar, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane and Aymeric Laporte.
Some of those superstars were clearly past their prime, but the mere fact that they were willing to move to the Middle East felt significant.
They may have already been multi-millionaires, but Pro League salaries were considered ‘life-changing’. Not even the previously principled Jordan Henderson could resist the riches on offer.
Consequently, Saudi Arabia was viewed as the game’s great disruptor, a legitimate challenge to the longstanding European dominance of the transfer market due to the Kingdom’s seemingly bottomless well of oil money.
Now, though, the disruption is taking place within the Pro League because, on Monday, it was an internal transfer rather than an external arrival that made the rest of the world sit up and take notice.
No longer playing ball
Ronaldo remains the face of the entire Saudi Arabian sporting project. Right from day one, he has served as a de facto ambassador for not only the Pro League, but the country itself.
Upon signing a new contract with Al-Nassr just last summer, he said, “I am happy because I know that the league is very competitive. Only the people who have never played in Saudi, who don’t understand anything about football, say this league is not top five [in the world].
“I believe 100 percent in my words, and the people that play in this league know what I am talking about. This is why I want to stay, because I believe in the project – not just the next two years – but until 2034, which will be the World Cup in Saudi Arabia. I believe, too, that will be the most beautiful [World Cup] ever.”
One cannot really put a price on that kind of PR work from the most followed public figure on the planet. However, it now seems as if Ronaldo is no longer willing to play ball – literally.
‘Unstoppable’
Despite arriving midway through the 2022-23 campaign with Al-Nassr top of the table, and scoring 91 times in 95 appearances since then, Ronaldo remains without a league title to his name. That drought seemed destined to end this season, as Al-Nassr hired Jorge Jesus during the summer, while at the same time signing Joao Felix and Kingsley Coman to form a formidable attacking quartet with Ronaldo and Mane.
As Felix told the league’s official website, “I think that, when all four of us are doing well, we’re unstoppable here in Saudi Arabia.”
The Chelsea flop certainly had a point. Al-Nassr made a flawless start, winning their first 10 games before being held to a 2-2 draw by Al-Ettifaq in their final game of 2025.
“We are on the right path,” Ronaldo wrote on Instagram, “and we know what we need to do in 2026!”
For the five-time Ballon d’Or winner, that meant strengthening the squad – particular as Al-Nassr’s results took a turn for the worse at the turn of the year.
‘There will be changes’
In the space of 10 days at the start of January, the Riyadh-based outfit lost three times, which saw a two-point lead over Al-Hilal become a seven-point deficit.
Just like Ronaldo, Jesus felt that reinforcements were required to reinvigorate his tiring team, with his hope being at least two players would arrive during the winter window, if not three: a forward, a defensive midfielder and a full-back.
“There will be changes to the team during the winter transfer window,” the former Flamengo coach told reporters. “Playing a match every three days is exhausting for the players.”
However, Jesus acknowledged that the club’s recruitment might be hindered by certain budgetary restrictions.
“In the winter transfer window, every coach hopes to strengthen his team, and I hope for that as well, but things are not easy,” he said. “So, if we are unable to sign players, we will continue working with the current names and we will compete for the title.”
On strike
Al-Nassr did eventually get a couple of deals over the line in he final two days of the winter window. It’s fair to say, though, that neither Hayder Abdulkareem nor Abdullah Al-Hamdan were what Ronaldo had in mind in terms of potential game-changers – particularly when compared to Al-Hilal’s incomings.
Having already spent more than €80 million (£69m/$94m) on Theo Hernandez and Darwin Nunez alone last summer, the league leaders signed five more players during the January window, including one-time Arsenal defender Pablo Mari and former Ballon d’Or winner Benzema.
It was the latter deal that sent shockwaves through the Pro League, and reportedly sent Ronaldo into a rage.
The forward was bitterly frustrated by Al-Nassr’s inability to make any statement signings as it was, so the news that their title rivals had landed his former Real Madrid team-mate on a free transfer allegedly tipped him over the edge, resulting in Ronaldo refusing to take to the field for Monday’s league meeting with Al-Riyadh.
Conflicts of interest
The circumstances surrounding Benzema’s move from Al-Ittihad to Al-Hilal were certainly unusual. The former France international still had just under six months left to run on his contract with Al-Ittihad, whom he fired to a domestic double last season with 25 goals in 33 appearances in all competitions, and he was open to signing an extension.
However, Benzema was upset by proposed structure of the deal, which, according to Fabrizio Romano, would have seen him “playing for free without any extra money, but just paid his image rights immediately”.
The forward found this proposal ‘disrespectful’ and, in a move that foreshadowed Ronaldo’s strike, made himself unavailable for selection for Al-Ittihad’s games against Al-Fateh and Al-Najma.
In the end, Benzema was allowed to join Al-Hilal on a free transfer – which seems strange on the face of it, but not when one considers that the two clubs involved are, along with Al-Nassr and Al-Ahli, owned by PIF. After all, just look at all the moves we see between Chelsea and its BlueCo brother, Strasbourg; having the same owners makes moves an awful lot easier.
The issue, of course, is Al-Ittihad, Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr and Al-Ahli are all competing in the same league – which creates an obvious conflict of interest that leaves PIF open to the kind of accusations of favouritism that we’re seeing now.
No longer a fair fight?
Just a month ago, Ronaldo remained defiant amid Al-Nassr’s on-field struggles. “It’s hard to compete with teams like Al-Hilal and Al-Ittihad, but we are still there, still pushing and fighting,” he told Arab News. “Football is like that; you have good moments and bad moments, but the most important thing is to be professional, to push hard, respect the club, respect your contract, and believe that things will change.”
However, it now seems as if PIF’s poster boy feels as if the Pro League title race is no longer a fair fight, and whether he’s right or wrong is probably irrelevant, as Ronaldo merely down tools is a terrible look for the league.
In recent windows, we’ve seen Saudi Arabian sides adopt a more frugal approach to player recruitment in part due to the increasing investment in other sports, and that’s partly responsible for the shift towards signing promising youngsters rather than ageing superstars. Of course, it still feels inevitable that Mohamed Salah will end up in the Pro League eventually, but the very obvious attempts to sign Vinicius Jr from Real Madrid are illustrative of the direction PIF wants to go in.
Ronaldo unquestionably remains key. Even at 40 years of age, his pulling power is gargantuan and this hissy fit is not only casting both himself and the league in a poor light, it’s also threatening to overshadow a gripping three-way title fight.
Amid all of the controversy on Monday, it was almost missed that a Ronaldo-less Al-Nassr defeated Al-Riyadh thanks to a solitary strike from Mane to close the gap to Al-Hilal to just one point, as the leaders were held to a 0-0 draw by third-placed Al-Ahli later that evening.
All anyone really wanted to talk about was whether Ronaldo would return to action in Friday’s appropriately timed clash with Al-Ittihad, which will bring together two sets of supporters enraged by Benzema’s move to Al-Hilal.
Al-Nassr definitely need their prolific skipper back for that game to maintain their title push, but it’s probably just as important for the Pro League and PIF that Ronaldo returns because, right now, the game’s great disruptors have unintentionally caused chaos in their own league.
