Cristiano Ronaldo and N’Golo Kanté are among the players thriving in Germany after a season in gentler waters
, and with Austria striving for a late equaliser, Patrick Wimmer runs through on goal. Wimmer is 23 years old, rapid, and plays his football for Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga under the count of counter-pressing, Ralph Hasenhüttl. But as Wimmer puts on the burners, he has reckoned without a 33-year-old midfielder from – according to Opta – the world’s 26th best league.
And yet, despite having supposedly killed off dozens of elite careers last summer, the Saudi league is reasonably well represented at these Euros, supplying 14 players: more than most of the countries that actually qualified. In terms of overseas players , the Saudi Pro League is actually the sixth biggest supplier at Euro 2024: ahead of the Eredivisie, the Turkish Super Lig and the Portuguese Primera Liga.
These are guys who can still do it, and very fleetingly at their very highest level, but not for a full gruelling European league season. Kanté’s last season at Chelsea was wrecked by a chronic hamstring injury, to the point where most people barely noticed him leaving. The same is true of Laporte, who started just 11 games in Manchester City’s 2022-23 title-winning season.
“He has regained his athletic abilities,” Deschamps said of Kanté ahead of the tournament. “We can discuss the specific intensity in Saudi Arabia, but he played more than 4,000 minutes.” The word is that over the next few windows Saudi clubs will try to bring a younger age profile to the league, with rumours – and of course these are just rumours – of bids for Federico Chiesa, Serhou Guirassy, Lucas Paquetá and Mohammed Kudus. But perhaps the cautionary tale of the entire Saudi exodus is that of Gabri Veiga, one of the brightest young talents in Spain, who decided to move from Celta Vigo to Al-Ahli last summer at the age of 21.
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