Greed Taints Soccer Culture

As fall rolls into the Bozeman area, soccer leagues across the world are preparing for the 2023-2024 season. For many high school athletes across Montana, sights are set towards the playoffs and hopefully, an eventual state championship. 

As Montana teams look ahead, they should keep in mind the way soccer in Bozeman and across the world is changing. The current state of world soccer is heavily centered around money and the Saudi influence is only causing more problems.

Major League Soccer teams are well into their seasons at this point, but with the introduction of Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest player ever, and Inter Miami CF fighting their way back to a playoff spot, it feels as if the season has new life.

All the attention is on the Saudi Pro League this season. The Saudi Pro League has gained a massive amount of attention over the last year since Ronaldo signed with the club Al-Nassar in December 2022. Since his shocking move from Manchester United, Ronaldo has influenced other big-name players to transfer to Saudi clubs for big name money — and it’s a problem. In the Saudi Pro League the government pays the players’ salaries. This means that there is little to no limit for what they can offer players as far as salary and incentives go.

With financial fair play rules — ways to make sure the biggest clubs in the world can’t spend an impossibly large amount of money so smaller clubs can still compete to sign players. Not even the biggest clubs in the world can offer too much to the world's best players.

Players such as Karim Benzema, Sadio Mane, Neymar Jr, Riyad Mahrez, Roberto Firmino, Jordan Henderson, N’Golo Kante and Allan Saint-Maximin all made the switch to the Saudi Pro League over the summer along with plenty others not named. Clearly, the league has grown in popularity in no small part due to the massive amount of wages being paid to players.

A perfect example of this is Kylian Mbappé’s offer during this summer to come to Saudi. The government made a proposal to pay $1.1 billion for Mbappé to come play for just one season — $324 million to complete the transfer and remaining $776 million for his salary.

Although soccer across the world is driven by money, I predict that it’ll be back to normal soon. The players who truly love the sport will find that playing for money in Saudi Arabia doesn’t hit the same as playing with pride for your home country.