HomeSportsSaudi Arabia lure Lionel Messi with a £320m-a-year deal

Saudi Arabia lure Lionel Messi with a £320m-a-year deal

The Saudi Arabian government is preparing the most lucrative salary deal in the history of football to bring Lionel Messi to its Saudi Pro League this summer.

Talks with Messi’s representatives, led by his father Jorge, are underway for when the player becomes a free agent at the end of June upon the expiration of his Paris Saint-Germain contract. The whole package could be worth $400 million annually (£320 million), which would exceed even the £165 million that Cristiano Ronaldo is being paid annually to play in Saudi until the summer of 2025.

The conventional process for Saudi Arabia to sign the world’s top talent, as with Ronaldo in December, has been for deals to have state involvement before a final destination club is decided.

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The Saudi government has recruited the former Manchester City chief executive Garry Cook, who was in charge of the club when the Abu Dhabi takeover was completed in 2008, in a similar position in the Saudi Pro League. It is anticipated that he will be involved in any discussions to secure Messi’s signature.

A PSG offer has been on the table since January, to extend Messi’s stay in the French capital for another 12 months, but there is now no expectation that it will be signed.

Ronaldo joined Al-Nassr, currently second in the league behind leaders Al-Ittihad. Al-Nassr’s traditional rivals are Al-Hilal and placing Messi with that club, historically the nation’s most successful would recreate the rivalry the pair had for nine years with Real Madrid and Barcelona. Al-Hilal won the Asian Champions League equivalent in 2021, their fourth title in that competition.

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Saudi Arabia enjoy Ronaldo’s impact

The Messi project combined with Ronaldo’s impact so far in Saudi – which has been considered a success by the Saudi Arabian authorities – is expected to secure the country’s status as a final-club destination for the world’s biggest names. The development of the game has been fast-tracked by Mohammed bin Salman under the crown prince’s Vision 2030 plan to place sport at the heart of the country’s modernising plan.

Messi is already the highest-profile “ambassador” for the Saudi Tourism Authority (STA), with another major publicity push this week having come at the cost of upsetting PSG. The club have fined their most famous player two weeks wages and suspended him for the same period as a punishment for travelling to Saudi without permission, to honour his commitments to his STA contract.

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PSG’s decision to discipline Messi was not taken lightly. The player’s requests to visit Saudi Arabia had been turned down, so when he flew to Riyadh on his private jet it was treated as a breach of his contract. When Messi then did not turn up for training on Monday PSG wanted to take a stand although they have not made a formal statement on the matter to avoid inflaming the situation further.

The underlying tensions between the Qatar, who own PSG via the Qatar Sports Investments vehicle, and Saudi Arabia are read into any major play in world football. During last year’s World Cup finals in Qatar, Messi was the star of STA adverts that ran in every commercial break on the host Qatari broadcaster beIN Sports.

The 16-club Saudi Pro League runs on the same August to May cycle as European competitions. Saudi Arabia ministers are delighted by the impact the Ronaldo signing has had on its population. Saudi Pro League attendances have almost doubled year on year and, since Ronaldo’s arrival, conversation about the league on social media among women and girls is up 237 per cent, according to official figures seen by Telegraph Sport.

The 1,000-word STA press release sent to media on Wednesday to accompany the Messi family’s trip to Saudi Arabia underlined just how important the world’s greatest footballer is to the rebranding of the kingdom, which is a contender to host the World Cup finals in 2030.

Not only did it detail the Saudi Arabia sightseeing itinerary of the man himself – “he was enchanted by his encounter with a white falcon that rested on his arm” – but also that of his wife Antonella Roccuzzo. She was described as having worn a traditional Saudi hama, “a decorative headpiece historically worn by women from the kingdom’s Najdi region”.

The Messi family brand is now a powerful bolt-on to the global reputation of the man himself, at 35 still capable of being the decisive player in Argentina’s World Cup triumph in Doha.

His connections with Saudi are well-established. Messi played for Barcelona in Jeddah in January 2020 in the Spanish Super Cup, a three-year deal worth £102 million to the Spanish football federation. In November 2019, Riyadh hosted a friendly between Argentina and Brazil when Messi met Turki Al-Sheikh, the chairman of the country’s “general entertainment authority”.

The Kingdom has become a leading destination for some of boxing’s biggest fights, including Anthony Joshua rematch with Andy Ruiz Jnr in Diriyah, one of the UNESCO world heritage sites that Messi visited this week. The nation’s sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund (PIF) led the consortium that acquired Newcastle United.

The Saudi Arabia government declined to comment. Representatives of Leo Messi Management also declined to comment.

Alfred Saiki
Alfred Saiki
A passionate sports journalist and administrator. I want to see the world.