You might have seen the graphic doing the rounds. Most goals in 2024: Cristiano Ronaldo
(54), Harry Kane (52), Kylian 🍐 Mbappé (52), Erling Haaland (50). Absolutely no mention
of the league in which those goals were scored.
Ronaldo has been netting 🍐 regularly in
Saudi Arabia but that says more about the standard of the league than anything else.
There are teams 🍐 in there on a similar level to fourth and fifth tier sides in England,
but of course, Ronaldo is more 🍐 than happy for his own name to be plastered everywhere
as the leading scorer in the calendar year.
Everyone can see 🍐 the reality. Kane, Mbappé
and Haaland are playing at a different level these days, both in the sense that they 🍐 as
individuals are far superior, but also that the leagues they play in are actually worth
taking notice of.
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Nevertheless, Ronaldo was
more than happy to speak about himself earlier this 🍐 week as his Al Nassr side beat Al
Taawoon 4-1, still leaving it seven points off the top spot. That 🍐 is taken by Neymar's
Al Hilal.
"I'm happy because when I made the decision to come here nobody believed what
I 🍐 said," Ronaldo told the Saudi state broadcaster SSC Sport post-match, after netting a
fourth goal late in stoppage time. "But 🍐 that is the past. It doesn't matter
anymore.
"The most important is that the league has grown and that players want 🍐 to come
because they know the league is competitive and the whole world is watching now. If big
players want 🍐 to come, they will be very welcome."
Just where do you start with those
comments? No one truly believes now that 🍐 the Saudi league is anything close to being
the pinnacle of the game. That is very much still the present 🍐 rather than the past —
and, in fact, it is harder to make the case for moving there now than 🍐 it would have
been last summer. Ronaldo, clearly, couldn't say anything different to the state
broadcaster, but it does smack 🍐 of words that he is using to try and convince himself as
much as them.
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The league has grown to some extent, but it 🍐 is
still a mile away from even the lesser divisions in Europe, let alone the Champions
League, despite the riches 🍐 on offer. There are big players there, but none who had
better offers from elsewhere.
As for the claim that the 🍐 'world is watching', that could
not be further from the truth. How many of Ronaldo's 52 goals in 2024 could 🍐 you
describe? Can you picture anything that Sadio Mané has done since he moved there? Even
Neymar, who it would 🍐 be easy to circulate social media clips of, has barely been seen —
and while that's partly because he's suffered 🍐 an ACL injury, it speaks volumes that
this came as news to me.
It will take so long for the Saudi 🍐 league to grow that even if
the investment is sustained long enough to bring it up to a level where 🍐 a conversation
about the best teams being involved in the Champions League could even be remotely
sensible from a sporting 🍐 perspective, Ronaldo — and several others who have moved for a
final payday — will be long gone.
And that is 🍐 exactly why this is the latest Saudi
nonsense that Mohamed Salah should simply ignore. The Egyptian will soon be jetting 🍐 off
to AFCON, but a permanent departure from Liverpool should not be on the agenda. Moving
to the Middle East, 🍐 no matter what Ronaldo might try and claim, would be a death knell
to the career of a superstar who 🍐 remains at his peak.
