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Consortsiums from Saudi Arabia, The Emirates and Qatar are well established in the top of European football, being owners at PSG, Newcastle United and Man City. They look to have grand controll in the transfer market at the moment.
China tried to buy football a few years back and a number of stars moved out, but that traffic has stopped as old stars get older and difficulties to get the Smith & Jones of China to be attracted to football.
To use money as a trigger for a move, might work once or twice, but you will never see Barcelona and Real Madrid moved into the sand. You can probably attract players, but with only an average of 8000 spectators in the Saudi Arabia top flight, you cannot just build your brand on import. and overlook the fact that fans follow club teams, their own nation and relates to that.
The move of Stephy Mavididi from Montpellier to Leicester is a special one, being financed by the money received from the sale of Harvey Barnes to Newcastle. Magpies selling Allan Saint-Maximin to Ahl Ahli, both clubs owned by PIF.
The money Montpellier received from the sale of Stephy Mavididi to Leicester was used to finance the move of Akor Adams joining from Norwegian club Lillestrom.
Russian club Zenit St. Petersburg sold Malcom to another Saudi Arabian club, Al Hilal, also owned by PIF. A fee of €60million changed hands. To see the branches in these transactions makes you wonder how football ethical standards are lined up as no one looks to care.
Football in Europe are at present funded by oil and gass from Saudi Arabia, as we struggle with global heating and war in Europe. To see it all in that perspective makes it difficult to understand how this can continue.
The Saudi Arabian clubs are not under UEFA FFP regulations and in that way able to finance all moves without having an eye on where that money is coming from, so as we look at it, you have a dumping area down in the sand that makes it possible to offload players for inflated prices far from their value.
Last year a Super League idea made fans react and start demonstrations, but when you look at all the transfer activity this summer, you must really understand were all this money is coming from and how different parties benefits from it all.
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