After its summer of big spending, the Saudi top-flight has been packed with storylines so far as it heads for its mid-season break
Like many competitions around the world, the Saudi Pro League has its own mid-season break, and the much-talked about division is now not set to resume until mid-February after signing off for 2023 over the past weekend.
The intrigue around the league’s potential remains following its eye-opening summer of spending, and it remains to be seen just how that is backed up during the winter window, with a number of top players again being linked with big-money moves to the Middle East.
On the pitch, a number of the big-name arrivals have lived up to their billing, though not every club goes into the break especially happy with how their campaign is panning out. Managers are beginning to come under fire, and there is a fear that the title race could be over already.
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WINNER: Cristiano Ronaldo
There’s no doubt who the Pro League’s player of the season so far is, with Ronaldo having returned 20 goals and nine assists in just 18 games. Say what you want about the overall level of the league, but the five-time Ballon d’Or winner is showing he can still dominate as he closes in on his 39th birthday.
Ronaldo’s performances have turned around what was a nightmare start to the season for Al-Nassr as they lost their opening two games. Since then, though, they have dropped points on just two other occasions, and go into the mid-season break sat second in the table while still in contention to win both the AFC Champions League and King’s Cup.
As long as the Portuguese superstar maintains his fine form in 2024, then it could be a trophy-laden campaign in Riyadh.
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LOSER: Neymar
While Ronaldo remains the biggest name in the Pro League, the honour of being the most expensive signing in the competition’s history belongs to Neymar after Al-Hilal forked out €90 million (£77m/$98m) to bring in the Brazilian from Paris Saint-Germain in August.
Unfortunately for the most successful club in Saudi football history, they are going to have to wait to see any return on their investment after Neymar’s first campaign in the Middle East was cut short after making just three league appearances.
Fitness issues meant the ex-Barcelona star’s debut was delayed as it was, and though he provided three assists in those three league games once he was on the pitch, the growing hype didn’t last long, as Neymar suffered a season-ending knee injury while representing Brazil in October.
It remains to be seen quite whether he will ever be the same player again as he closes in on his 32nd birthday, but this was certainly not the season anyone envisaged for the league’s newest superstar. Fortuntaly for Al-Hilal, they don’t seem to be missing Neymar all that much…
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WINNER: Al-Hilal’s other signings
While they have been shorn of their presumed attacking linchpin, that hasn’t stopped Al-Hilal from proving themselves to be the class of the Pro League. Jorge Jesus’ side remain unbeaten through 19 matches, which has allowed them to open up a seven-point lead at the top of the table.
More so than any other team, they have been driven on by their big-name summer signings. Goalkeeper Yassine Bounou has quickly proven himself the best in the division after coming in from Sevilla, while ahead of him, Kalidou Koulibaly has marshalled a defence that has conceded just nine league goals thus far.
In midfield, Ruben Neves and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic have lived up to their billing as a potentially transformative duo, and up front Aleksandar Mitrovic is challenging Ronaldo for the Golden Boot after netting 17 goals in as many games. Alongside him, Malcom has chipped in with nine goals and five assists himself, including scoring two hat-tricks.
Koulibaly aside, none of those players could have been tagged as being past their primes when they arrived in pre-season, and Hilal have perhaps laid the blueprint for other clubs when it comes to the profile of players they should be targeting with their immense wealth in future windows.
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LOSER: Karim Benzema & Al-Ittihad
The other superstar player who arrived over the summer, Benzema came in as the reigning Ballon d’Or winner and joined a squad at Al-Ittihad that were still celebrating winning the Pro League title a few weeks prior. To say things haven’t gone to plan, though, would be an understatement.
The defending champions find themselves languishing down in seventh place heading into the break, and are already a remarkable 25 points off the top of the table. Even qualification for next season’s AFC Champions League feels like a stretch, with the bottom three clubs currently closer than the top three in terms of points.
The signs were not good from the off, with reports suggesting that manager Nuno Espirito Santo was not altogether pleased with Benzema’s arrival, while another highly-touted summer signing, Jota, was left out of the Ittihad squad when they registered their official roster following the closure of the transfer window.
Nuno eventually paid for a poor start to the season with his job, but things have got little better under his replacement, Marcelo Gallardo. They have won just one of their five league games under the Argentine coach, losing the last three, including an embarrassing 5-2 home defeat to Ronaldo and Al-Nassr.
As for Benzema, his tally of nine league goals and five assists is by no means poor, but is some way off those towards the top of the goal charts. The former Real Madrid striker has come in for criticism for both his attitude and his fitness, with this so far proving to be a rather underwhelming final chapter to one of the best careers of the 21st century.
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LOSER: Steven Gerrard
Another global superstar, and another season to forget. Gerrard took over as manager of Al-Ettifaq in the summer in a bid to rebuild his coaching reputation, and despite not being one of the four clubs who are now owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), he was given plenty of cash to spend.
The ex-Liverpool captain brought in the likes of Jordan Henderson, Gini Wijnaldum and Moussa Dembele, with many believing they were set up to be at least the best of the rest behind the top four. However, after shocking Al-Nassr on the opening day of the season, things have quickly turned sour for Gerrard.
Ettifaq head into the break having not tasted victory since October 28, with their nine-game winless run in all competitions having dropped them to eighth in the table, and they are just eight points above the relegation places. Perhaps most concerningly, they have scored just three times during that run, with their 22 league goals so far the lowest among the current top 10. An injury to star striker Dembele certainly hasn’t helped, but the pressure is on Gerrard to turn things around quickly.
All this is happening while Gerrard’s former club Aston Villa have gone from relegation-threatened in the Premier League to title challengers in just over 12 months since his departure, meaning his previous reputation as a top young coach might already be unsalvageable.
WINNER: Al-Ahli
Given their summer spending, it’s easy to forget that Al-Ahli are actually a newly-promoted club in the Pro League, and so there was always likely to be some teething issues for new manager Matthias Jaissle to overcome following his arrival from Red Bull Salzburg on the eve of the season.
Needless to say those arrived, and there was some pressure mounting on Jaissle when his side won just three of their seven league games through September and October, and then went out of the King’s Cup to relegation-threatened Abha.
Since then, however, they have begun to put things together, with Ahli now on an eight-match unbeaten run which has seen them keep seven clean sheets and has lifted them to third in the table, building them a six-point cushion when it comes to the final AFC Champions League qualifying berth.
Summer signings Riyad Mahrez and Franck Kessie have come into their own in recent months, while Spanish youngster Gabri Veiga has also begun to show improvements after a slow start to his career in the Middle East.
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LOSER: Roberto Firmino
Despite all the current joy surrounding Al-Ahli, one of their biggest summer signings is having a season to forget. Firmino began the campaign with a hat-trick in the opening game of the season, but it’s been all downhill since then for the former Liverpool forward.
That treble remains the only time he has found the net for his new club, and Ahli’s recent unbeaten run coincides exactly with when he was dropped from the starting line-up, with the Brazilian having been limited to substitute cameos ever since.
Reports have suggested that he could return to Europe as soon as this month, and it would not come a moment too soon for one of the biggest transfer flops of the Saudi season.
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WINNER: Al-Taawoun
There weren’t meant to be surprise packages in the Saudi Pro League anymore, but Al-Taawoun have certainly upset the new order of things with a remarkable first half of the season.
Having narrowly avoided relegation in 2019-20, the club has built itself back up in recent years, and finished fifth last term, But after not making anything like the splash in the summer market as some of their rivals, it was expected that they would slide back into mid-table.
Instead, Taawoun head into the break sat fourth in the table, with victories over both Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr and Gerrard’s Al-Ettifaq in their back pocket. They did suffer back-to-back home defeats to round out 2023, but they remain well placed to push for AFC Champions League qualification in the new year.
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LOSER: Al-Shabab
Not quite the biggest disappointment of the season, but Al-Shabab’s squad is certainly one of the most talented in the Pro League, and so for them to have won just five matches out of 19 so far this season is a massive underperformance.
Former Sevilla schemer Ever Banega was already established at the club ahead of 2023-24, and he was joined by veterans Yannick Carrasco and Roman Saiss this summer, while the club also beat off competition from the Premier League to sign striker Habib Diallo, who netted 20 times for Strasbourg in Ligue 1 last season.
Diallo, though, has been a major disappointment, scoring only once thus far for a team that sits just four points above the relegation zone and is already looking for its third manager of the campaign after sacking both Marcel Keizer and Igor Biscan.
WINNER: Georges-Kevin Nkoudou
Tottenham fans might (or might not) remember Nkoudou from his 27 underwhelming appearances in a Spurs shirt between 2016-2019, but the Cameroon international has found a new lease of life in Saudi Arabia after joining Damac on a free transfer from Besiktas.
Only Ronaldo and Mitrovic have scored more than Nkoudou’s 14 goals so far this season, as a recent run of eight goals in four games included a match-winning double against defending champions Al-Ittihad. His form spearheaded a run of 11 games through October, November and December during which Damac lost just once and has seen them fly up the table to sixth place.
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LOSER: Roberto Mancini
Among all the moves Saudi Arabia has made in the world of football over the past 18 months, perhaps one of the more under-the-radar was their swoop to hire Roberto Mancini away from the Italy job and have him take charge of the Saudi national team.
However, the Euro 2020-winning coach is facing some issues as he prepares for his first Asia Cup, with some of his star players heading into the tournament without many minutes in their legs due to the influx of stars from abroad into their clubs.
Saudi captain Salman Al-Faraj and midfield partner Mohamed Kano have had their places taken by Neves and Milinkovic-Savic at Al-Hilal, while No.1 goalkeeper Mohammed Alowais has also been benched to make room for Bounou at the league leaders.
That’s not to say that every member of Mancini’s squad has struggled in the new Pro League ecosystem, but with more big names set to arrive into the league between now and the 2026 World Cup, it could become a major headache for the ex-Manchester City boss.