Simone Inzaghi could be the new Cristiano Ronaldo
The Italian manager, European vice-champion with Inter, can take the place of the Portuguese forward as the main star of Saudi football.
On Thursday June 5th, Simone Inzaghi was introduced as new manager of Al-Hilal, one of the top club in the Saudi Pro League. He is not the first international football coach to go to the Gulf country, but no one before him did that in such a significant moment. Inzaghi signed for Al-Hilal just few days after losing the UEFA Champions League final with Inter against Paris Saint-Germain: he is 49-years-old and he is considered one of the best manager in European football.
The PIF-backed club choose to pay him €26 million, making him the second highest paid manager in the world after Diego Simeone. This means Inzaghi will be one of the most paid professionals in Saudi football, and one of the new faces of the Pro League. At the same time, Cristiano Ronaldo - the symbolic player of the whole Saudi football movement - could leave the country, after failing to conquest a single trophy in his three seasons with Al-Nassr.
The Portuguese arrived to Saudi Arabia in January 2023, receiving a gross salary of €200 million per year - the highest in the world. This deal was the first step in the global Saudi plan on conquering football, and Ronaldo was to become the face of the project, whose medium-term goal was to organize the 2034 World Cup. Yet, the forward won just an Arab Club Champions Cup in 2023 (a minor trophy) and two Golden Boots as top scorer of the Saudi Pro League.
Al-Nassr failed to win the league, despite the hiring of two well-known European coaches (Luis Castro and Stefano Pioli) and over $1 billion spent in two years on the purchase of new players (such as Marcelo Brozović, Sadio Mané, Aymeric Laporte and Jhon Durán). The club even failed the qualification to the 2025 Club World Cup, on which Ronaldo and even FIFA were counting a lot, in the hope of renewing the challenge with Leo Messi. The Portuguese contract expires at the end of June 2025, and in the last days several rumors claim he could leave Saudi Arabia.
From Cristiano Ronaldo to Simone Inzaghi
The plan was to transform Al-Nassr in the one of the most important club in the world, satisfying Ronaldo's sporting ambitions (and not just his pockets). But it turned out that the Riyadh-based club is not even the most important in Asia or in its own country too. In these three years, Al-Ittihad won the league twice, and Al-Hilal once, while the Jeddah-based Al-Ahli won the last AFC Champions League. It's no surprise that a hyper-competitive character like Cristiano Ronaldo is so disappointed that he could now leaves.
The fact is Saudi football doesn’t need the 40-years-old former Ballon d’Or anymore. The Pro League is full of international well-known players, and now is the more politically influential Al-Hilal that could be used as club-image for the movement. The blue-and-white team - who already signed the first Saudi football superstar, the Brazilian Roberto Rivellino in 1978 - already boasts players like former Napoli Kalidou Koulibaly, former Lazio Sergej Milinković-Savić, and former Manchester City João Cancelo.
Saudi Arabia has shown that it has no problem in buying great players, but so far what its football is lacking is a clear tactical identity. That why a top manager like Simone Inzaghi could be the new face of the project, instead of Cristiano Ronaldo. PIF wants to give him a top team to manage, for the imminent Club World Cup or for the next international tournaments. Recent rumors linked Al-Hilal to Victor Osimhen, Theo Hernández, Francesco Acerbi, Éderson and Marc-André ter Stegen, five very renown footballer at the top of European football (only Acerbi and Ter-Stegen could be considered at the end of their carreers).
But maybe Inzaghi won't be the only football star after the end of Ronaldo’s Era. In the last days of May international sources revealed that PIF is in talks with Messi to join one of its four Saudi club after his contract with Inter Miami expires, on June 30. The Argentinian could take Ronaldo’s role on the field, but probably not with Al-Nassr, and Inzaghi’s Al-Hilal is quoted as the main destination, after trying to sign Messi already in Summer 2023.