Quote from: Die_empty on Today at 03:20:22 AM

Quote from: Sithara007 on Today at 02:44:17 AM

Here we need to remember that Al Qadsiah is not one of the clubs under the sponsorship of the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF). Therefore they don't have a lot of funds available with them. This club is based in Dhammam and is owned by Saudi Aramco. It is encouraging that such a club is spending a huge amount of money (€65 million) on Mateo Retegui. This will improve the competitiveness of the league, and will decrease the gap between the clubs sponsored by the PIF and the rest.

Saudi Aramco is a state-owned oil firm. So it could be said that Al Qadsiah is still under government sponsorship. This deal makes Mateo Retegui the most expensive ever Italian player. The move of this 26-year-old Italian striker might be for money since he would be earning about €20million per season.

He has been part of the Italian national team, and nobody knows how this move will affect his chances of playing for Gli Azzurri under the new coach Gennaro Gattuso. It is a big win for the Saudi Pro League because Mateo Retegui is good player that will contribute to the quality and development of the growing League.

If I am not wrong, Aramco recently got listed at the Saudi stock exchange. So it is no longer 100% owned by the Saudi government. That said, I don't really think that they can afford to splurge hundreds of millions of Euros every year on players, unlike the case with the other four clubs sponsored by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (Al Nassr, Al Hilal, Al Ahli and Al Ittihad). But then Al Qadsiah finished ahead of Al Ahli last time, even with limited funds. And they were just 2 points behind Al Nassr.