 and Pep Guardiola's pay packet at Manchester City (£19.m) So who is funding Al-Ettifaq's remarkable investment as part of the Saudi Pro League's wider play to become one of the sport's biggest domestic competitions? Well, the state essentially. The drive to enhance the Saudi League is coming from the snappily-named Player Acquisition Center of Excellence (PACE) programme, which is now being headed up by former Chelsea recruitment chief Michael Emenalo. PACE's big picture idea is that by bringing in international stars they will develop homegrown youngsters to the extent that their league eventually becomes self-sufficient, not needing to stump up hitherto unseen salaries for veteran stars, and the national team, fresh from sh){kind=link}
Saudi Pro League club is not among the quartet that was recently taken over by the Public Investment Fund but financial packages look set to be provided by the snappily-named Player Acquisition Center of Excellence
Jordan Henderson is set to earn an eye-watering £700,000-a-week if the former ally of LGBTQ+ rights makes a remarkable move to Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ettifaq.
But the fact the England midfielder is not joining one of the four clubs recently taken over by the Gulf state’s Public Investment Fund, who are also Newcastle United’s major owners, has raised eyebrows around the source of finance and questions over the figures behind a club that last won silverware in the 1980s.
Al-Ettifaq list a number of independent businessmen as directors with the chair, Khaled Abdullah Al-Dabel, sitting on the board of the Budget rent-a-car firm and a number of others linked to medium-sized real estate firms.
And there is nothing in their most recent financial report to suggest that they are capable of suddenly forking out extraordinary sums of money for players nearing the end of their careers.