It all started with Cristiano Ronaldo, after that it seemed that Saudi Arabia was a "paradise" for football stars in the waning of their careers, but this summer showed that the country is now being chosen by those who could still be important players in the strongest European leagues .
Karim Benzema, Roberto Firmino, Ngolo Kante, Ruben Neves, Kalidou Koulibaly, Eduard Mendy, Marcelo Brozović, are just some of the masters who will entertain fans in stadiums throughout Saudi Arabia next season. In addition to all that, he bought the English club Newcastle in a consortium led by the top of this country.
This Asian country continues to invest heavily in sports, so after golf, Formula 1 and professional boxing, the most profitable and popular football has come to the fore.
However, as Saudi Arabia's sporting ambitions grow, many increasingly point out that this is a classic "sportswashing" by the authorities in that country in order to divert attention from the bad image of Saudi Arabia and the disastrous state of human rights in it.
After coming to power, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, promised to modernize the Kingdom and suggested in an interview in 2018 that his country - a key ally of the West - would try to "minimize" the execution of the death penalty, he recalled recently. BBC.
But five years later, Saudi Arabia is still one of the countries with the highest number of executions in the world.
"The crown prince has done exactly the opposite of what he promised," said Maja Foa, director of Ripriv, an organization that records Saudi executions. "He oversaw massive executions and brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests."
The BBC also states that Ripriv documented 147 executions in Saudi Arabia last year, but says there could have been more, while the Guardian reminds that Nura bint Saed el Kahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison for posting on social networks. In addition, the intelligence services of the United States of America claim that Bin Salman approved the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Football aces turned a blind eye to all that, this time, even though the human rights organization "Amnesty International" called on Cristiano Ronaldo, as well as the recently appointed coach of Al Etifaq, Steven Gerrard, to speak openly about the state of human rights in Saudi Arabia.
"Sporting success seems to be more important to too many people than the state of human rights," concludes the Guardian.
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