A few months after they joined the clubs, the players brought by Saudi Arabia to its league started feeling discontent. They refused to talk about their contract details in all media interviews except for the budget when concluding the contracts.
Among these shining stars is Karim Benzema, who was brought in by Saudi Arabia but went quiet and missed a lot of training for a while. He told those close to him that he was unhappy with Saudi Arabian life and that the players had been duped by the money offer, but that life was not what they had imagined.
It seems that there are questions surrounding Benzema’s future with Al-Ittihad Club and his contract extension, according to sports analysts.
All that glitters is not gold
Al Nassr defender Aymeric Laporte has said many players like him that joined Saudi Pro League last summer, clubs are “dissatisfied,” citing working conditions and broken promises.
Laporte, who won five Premier League titles at City as well as the treble last season, said the working culture in Saudi Arabia is unlike that in Europe.
“The ultimatum what you give them doesn’t matter to them,” Laporte said. “I mean, they’re really going about their business. You negotiate something and then they don’t accept it after you have signed it. … It’s a bit of a bummer that I don’t know [would happen] if in Europe. Of course, the same thing that they take away from you in that respect, they compensate in other ways.”
Laporte’s comments after a Jordan Henderson ended his six-month stay at Al Ettifaq to join Ajax.
Swamped with debt, European football risks making itself a well-paid puppet of the Saudi propaganda machine, strengthening the government’s perception that its place on the world stage will not be threatened by its flagrant human rights abuses – as long as it continues to invest in events that distract us from them, Human Rights Watch earlier said.
