There's nothing wrong with what he said. Even though Saudi fans are passionate about their league, they wouldn't care about what you or the West think, as they're happy as fuck to see top players playing for their teams.
I just find it funny some of you keep comparing the Saudi league with the rest. Nobody gives a damn. Take that from someone who lives in Saudi.
Dude, we aren't debating this.
I'm sure you're walking around with a hard cock in your 90 degree C heat and super excited. I don't doubt that.
The reason he sounds like a clown is because there are literally thousands of people who ATTEND lower league games. It's a cultural connection. You see your mate from grade-school play football for your local side. There is a comradery with it, it's YOUR TEAM. That's why people care, it's why you have to have a 38 year wait-list for Man U season tickets and shit. It's a cultural aspect of how the entire country came out and through the Industrial Revolution.
@Dostoevsky
Sure, plastic City or plastic PSG, I don't care. The point is the fanbase already existed. City was just as well supported when SWP played there, it's a LOCAL CLUB. There isn't ZERO INTEREST from people, they love their boys and their local teams. Newcastle, a phenomenon, Geordies love their lads. PSG is kinda meh with fanbase, but they are ruthless, impassioned.
The way anything like football works is it starts locally, small, in corner pubs and casual train conversations. That grows into a larger and larger and ever-growing aspect of entertainment at large. People choose to watch X instead of Y. It's entertainment. If you argue the players are the pure aspect of the entertainment, I would disagree with you.
Messi and Ronaldo and Camivinga and Zidane and Ruediger and Haaland have their people who follow them solely because they are from X place or are Y fun to watch. Cool. That lasts for 10 to 15 to 20 years. That's how television shows are measured, not trillion-dollar industries.
And the more I think about it, lower-division sides are often time more ruthlessly followed and attended than any others.
Sure, television viewership drives the bus, but there isn't a bus without a fanbase filling the seats behind the driver.
Putting the KSA's aspects of purchasing players from Senegal, England, Brazil, France, et cetera above the REAL aspect of people who believe in the players is completely different.
Union Berlin's stadium was rebuilt and overhauled on the backs of the supporters. Dortmund has 80,000 people show up for EVERY home game, Bayern, or Koeln, or fuckin' Chemnitz. THAT drives people to want to watch, to want to see, to want to attend. A connection. Somewhere, somehow, there is a connection.
There are two ABSOLUTE differences here. One, Neymar has ZERO connection to anything that isn't related to money. He didn't join for the lustre, he didn't join for the fame, glory, the supporters, the people, the television..... He didn't. He joined on a 24-month contract for money. As Tevez said about his time in China, "I spent more time at Disney World China than at training; it was a vacation I was paid for."
Two, it's completely different drawing fans to a place because they like the name on the front of the shirt than the name on the back.
Europe spent almost 150 years making people care about the front of the shirt. See who sticks around when the names on the back change.