Why Jordan Henderson is looking to get out of Saudi Pro League

Just 133 people turned up for a match between Al-Riyadh and Al Okhdood in the Saudi Pro League, triggering reevaluations in the footballing world about the league’s potential. Last year, Cristiano Ronaldo had said that he thinks that the Saudi Pro League can be one of the top five leagues in the world. Six months on, that statement doesn’t seem to hold up.

Despite the influx of huge names like Neymar and Karim Benzema, a shocking number of matches have seen a plummet in attendance.

The league which was the toast of town during the last summer transfer window, splurging £750million to bring a lot of big names into its fold, seems to have lost a lot of its aura as the year progressed. And now, there are whispers blowing in the wind that some of the players who had opted to go on this Middle-Eastern adventure are looking to end it prematurely.

The chief name among them is Jordan Henderson who signed for Al-Ettifaq last year after a controversial switch from Liverpool. Reportedly disillusioned by the significant drop in quality from his Anfield days, the former Liverpool captain is keen to return to the hallowed grounds he once called home. But it’ll not be easy with many fans unhappy with him for making the switch in the first place. Some even booed him on his return in England colours against Australia at Wembley last October.

Henderson’s move to the Gulf state has probably hampered his reputation well beyond fixing. A vocal supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, his decision to play in a country where homosexuality is illegal, felt hypocritical to a lot of people, with the backlash being swift and severe.

Even though he has repeatedly said that money was not the driving factor behind the move, there seems to be few takers to that scenario. “I wanted something that would excite me. It needed to be something that I felt as though I could add value in and try something new — a new challenge and for different reasons,” he had said in an interview with the Athletic.

The initial days of Henderson’s beginning in the league, however, were rosy. Under the watchful eyes of Steven Gerrard, Henderson was the anchor in the Ettifaq midfield defeating Ronaldo’s Al Nassr 2-1 in the very first game of the season. After a 4-3 win against Al-Tai, though, the wheels came off the outfit with Ettifaq just winning 1 in the next 12 matches.

Six months on, reports have surfaced that the player and his family were finding it difficult to adjust to the country and he is trying to get an out, even on loan, to some European club. It’s also not difficult to imagine what a shock it was for him to play in front of 696 people in a match against Al-Riyadh, when he is accustomed to the booming 50,000 plus at Anfield.

There is also the factor of the vast amount Henderson will have to pay if he wants to call time on his Saudi stint. In Saudi, the foreign players’ salaries are tax free provided they stay for 2 years and so if the former Anfield man wants to return to England, he would have to pay a tax bill of £7m due to Saudi’s flat income tax rate of 20%.

With his ex-Liverpool teammates Roberto Firmino and Fabinho also reportedly looking for a way out of the cash-rich league, the bloom is slowly coming off the rose.

That’s a really long drop for a league that was supposed to be viewed as the upcoming powerhouse of world football. With interest in the league dwindling, Neymar’s side Al Hilal is the only one which averages 26.842 supporters in each home game in a stadium which can house 68,752 people. But they are also just filling under 40% of the total capacity, according to Transfermarkt.

Meanwhile, Benzema’s Al Ittihad averages 19,870 in a stadium of 62,345 capacity and Al Ahli gets 17,544 per match with a capacity of just over 62,000. Ronaldo’s Al Nassr plays in a stadium with the capacity of 25,000 with the average attendance being 20,308 which is pretty good.

As you go down the table beyond the aforementioned Big 4 Saudi clubs, the numbers get worse with Henderson’s club averaging just 7,854 supporters per match in a stadium that can hold 35,000 while Al-Riyadh SC have just 1,394 average fans turning up for their matches.

Though the Saudi League is unlikely to go the route of the Chinese Super League, it’s still a few years away from being accepted as a viable challenger to its veteran European counterparts.

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