Euro 2024: Ronaldo and Neves lead charge to prove Saudi Pro League sceptics wrong
This time last year, Ruben Neves was in the final negotiations for a contract that would lift him into the super-elite of football’s earners.
The midfielder had the real promise of senior club silverware, too, something lacking in a distinguished career spread across the top division of his native Portugal, with Porto, and in the upper tier of England, with Wolverhampton Wanderers. He was about to sign for Al Hilal, regular champions of a transforming Saudi Pro League.
In his early 20s, Neves used to be praised as being the best footballer in the English Championship, so powerfully did he galvanise Wolves to promotion to the Premier League in 2017/18.
He was deemed a little unlucky, that summer, not to be included in Portugal’s World Cup plans. But Neves was still only 21, and there would be many opportunities ahead.
Euro 2024, where Portugal begin their campaign on Tuesday against the Czech Republic, may be his best yet. Neves is at his third major tournament, hopes to pass 50 caps while there, and to add another medal to a highly decorated year.
Yet, pending his first appearance in Germany, he is aware of muttered scepticism about how close he, at 27, can truly be to his peak. The doubts stem from his having left one of the leading European domestic leagues to move to the Gulf.
And he is among a significant group of players at Euro 2024 hearing those doubts. Had he tuned into coverage of Sunday evening’s Serbia versus England match, he would have picked up a prevailing – though by no means unanimous – tone that questions how sharp, how well-conditioned, how competitive players who have spent the past 10 months in Saudi Arabia can be.
There were certainly dismissive voices across the media on Monday about Neves’ Al Hilal teammate Aleksandr Mitrovic as he led Serbia’s forward line against England.
On British television one pundit explicitly wondered if Mitrovic had declined in effectiveness since, last summer, he moved from London, and Premier League Fulham – this despite his 40 goals in 43 games across club competitions for the Saudi champions.
On French radio, a commentator judged the club environment Mitrovic works in as “a minor league,” noting that Mitrovic – who, like Neves, spent a successful portion of his career in English football’s second tier – boasts a fabulous goalscoring record in the Championship and in the Pro League, but a much lower ratio of goals per game from his time with Fulham in the Premier League.
But Mitrovic’s form, with Al Hilal and with Serbia, where he has scored 58 times in 92 caps, are arguments enough for Serbia manager Dragan Stojkovic to put him at the head of a hierarchy of centre-forwards that also includes Juventus’s Dusan Vlahovic and AC Milan’s Luka Jovic.
Aleksandar Mitrovic had a prolific season for Al Hilal, ensuring he remains Serbia's first-choice striker. Reuters
More than that, Stojkovic welcomed last summer’s move of two of his leading players, Mitrovic and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, to Al Hilal, because it meant them linking up, week in week out, and reinforcing what has long been a successful axis between central midfield, Milinkovic-Savic’s domain, and centre-forward, for Serbia.
Confronting the perception that Mitrovic, who quit Fulham for Al Hilal, and Milinkovic-Savic, who left Lazio, had somehow lowered their standards, Stojkovic smiled: “Yes, they have made a problem for me, but not in the way people think.”
The “problem” is simply in how Stojkovic now distributes his time observing his players during the club season. “It just means, besides all the other games I’m watching, I’m committed to watching the Saudi Pro League.”
Doing so reassured Stojkovic that Mitrovic’s appetite for goals remains fierce and that Milinkovic-Savic can still dominate a midfield, as he did against England when Serbia upped their game in Monday’s second half, albeit without finding the equalising goal to Jude Bellingham’s early header.
Damac's Nicolae Stanciu scored a stunning goal to lead Romania to victory over Ukraine. AFP
There is a strong Saudi subtext to these Euros, be it scepticism about the motives behind the ambitious state-backed spending in the Pro League, or curiosity about standards.
Neves and the Serbian pair are among 14 players from the Pro League at the 32-nation Euros, and among 18 employed by clubs in the Gulf, a significant rise on previous European Championships.
Nicolae Stanciu, who plays in Saudi Arabia with Damac, scored the first goal in Romania’s shock 3-0 Group E win against Ukraine on Monday.
It’s a reflection of the increasing global spread of top talent. At the 16-country Copa America beginning on Friday in the US, there will be four players under contract at Saudi clubs. Proudly representing the UAE’s league and the reigning Asian club champions, the Copa will also have Al Ain’s dynamic Paraguayan Kaku on its cast list.
The impact is felt on every continent. At the 24-team Africa Cup of Nations in January, there were 25 Pro League employees on the starting grid.
N'Golo Kante's man-of-the-match display for France against Austria showed he still operates at a top level after one season at Al Ittihad. Reuters
And if some of the stars among them had disappointing tournaments – Al Nassr’s Sadio Mane with Senegal, Al Ahli’s Riyad Mahrez with Algeria – it would be hard to blame their league for that, when Ivory Coast, who came back from a desperately poor group phase to claim the Afcon title, were so indebted to the midfield strength provided by Seko Fofana, who spent the first half of the season at Al Nassr, and Franck Kessie, of Al Ahli.
There may yet be a Pro League employee lifting the European Championship trophy come July 15th, too, if Spain – who have selected Al Nassr’s Aymeric Laporte – or France – who recalled N’Golo Kante of Al Ittihad – or the Netherlands – with whom Giorgino Wijnaldum, of Al Ettifaq, is closing in on 100 caps – make it to the Berlin final.
Or possibly there may more than one, if Neves’s Portugal repeat their Euros success of 2016. Had Portugal manager Roberto Martinez picked the squad he wanted, free of injury, there would probably be a trio of Saudi-based players in his party. Otavio, the Al Nassr player, dropped out of contention with fitness problems.
Portugal's main man, meanwhile, enters the Euros on Tuesday. And Cristiano Ronaldo will be closely scrutinised against various criteria.
There’s his advancing years – 39 is a phenomenal age for an attacking footballer to still be mastering a sport of high pressing and whiplash speeds.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Ruben Neves are leading lights for both their Saudi Pro League clubs and Portugal. EPA
There’s his club and the league he plays pathfinder for. Ronaldo, more than anybody at Euro 2024, will be judged on how well-prepared a season with Al Nassr has left him for an elite international tournament.
The numbers offer a compelling argument. “It’s about what players are doing day after day,” said Martinez on his keeping faith with Ronaldo, Portugal’s leading scorer of all time and also their main marksman through an impeccable qualifying campaign. “Let’s talk about the statistics. A player who scores 44 goals in 45 games for his club is showing his consistency.”
Other international managers have, like Stojkovic, started paying closer attention to the Pro League this season and actually sees advantages for European players in being in the Saudi set-up. The Pro League paused during January and February’s Asian Cup, which acted as a useful winter break.
Conditions during the warmer months, meanwhile, make for a fine test of a player’s endurance, ahead of a European summer.
“With high temperatures and humidity, it is a different context in Saudi Arabia,” noted Didier Deschamps, the France head coach, while he was assessing whether to recall Kante after a two-year absence from Les Bleus’s squads. “And you sometimes see the impact of that in the last third of matches.”
In the examination of stamina to come over the next three weeks, the likes of Ronaldo, Neves and Milinkovic-Savic may find reserves that others at these Euros start to envy.