Son turned down Saudi Arabia after a season where everyone thought he’d declined to stay and captain Tottenham. He’s currently in talks to extend his deal at the club aswell, fantastic to see loyalty staying strong in the sport.
It's a bit early to say, but Tottenham look really good this season, I think Ange is the kind of long term deal manager these declining big clubs are in need of
For me, I think Son leaving the club would have hurt more than Kane. With Kane it was always an inevitability, a matter of when not of. But Son, for whatever reason, is almost never linked to any moves away, no other club has ever seriously tried to take him. And I’m not gonna complain about that. He’s been a brilliant player for us, deserves that armband, and clearly is happy to stay.
Please do a What on earth is going on at Ajax… Dusan Tadic left due to poor leadership and investment. Currently 12th after their 3-1 loss to Twente last night. It seems that their youth players haven’t produced recently as well…
Not to mention that the manager and technical director seem to be at each other's throats not even a month into the campaign. Even more bizarre is that the new manager knew that the deal was that the new TD was going to go out and find players and that the manager's job was to form a team from what he got. Now the manager is complaining to the media that he didnt get he player he personally wanted. Wild stuff.
The TD bought a dozen of young players whom were mostly offered 5-year contracts. As an Ajax youth player, that now means you have no future at the club. I don't understand how a club can let something like that happen. Firing Overmars (the politically correct thing to do) was a huge blow. That makes the whole story even better material for Alfie, haha!
Son actually quoted Sung Yong Ki, the former KR national team captain who used to play for Swansea, saying "Like Ki said, the captain of Korea doesn't go to play in China." That was chills.
@@gzs7483Saudi slowly just become what China is. Their performing poorly in their Asian cup campaign. And the problem is their top team conquered by foreign player and more worst their player don't abroad from their league
Di Maria really didn't have a bad season at United; before moving to United, he wasn't known for scoring goals, rather his build up play, and assists... And it showed in that sole season with us, 3 league goals, and 10 league assists in 27 league games... It wasn't great, but it was nowhere near terrible... Too bad he wanted out.
I look at goal scorers like singers in a band. You are nothing without your defenders and bandmates, but you get all the credit. In fact. You do the least work. Source. I am the singer.
generational wealth, football career is short if you want to live rich life style till death you need good investments or hundreds of million, life is long
@@SugarRayValentine they go broke bc they spend their money on stupid investments... saudi money doesnt save them from going broke if they spend stupidly
It's not like Lukaku couldn't join Inter, though. He could. But he then started to talk to Juventus instead after saying he only wanted Inter earlier, and it angered Inter and they withdrew their offer. So essentially Lukaku scuppered his own move and had to go to Roma on loan as a last resort. Still nice he rejected Saudi but... the story is quite different.
so you did the research like Alfie did and didn't believe what you so online ha? O wait you didn't, haaa funny. Pls just don't type lies online, you make a fool of yourself.
Kasper Schmeichel deserves to be mentioned more than any other player... he rejected a Saudi offer in favor of Anderlecht where he'll make around £200,000 a year. That's slightly less than a 2 weeks pay from his previous employer Nice.
@@maciejbala477 Not sure how it's a typo bud, I'm first language Welsh and the direct translation if I'd of thought. From "fyswn i'n meddwl". You continue to police us though. 🤣
The 'albeit from a club that I had never heard of until Tuesday' was a bit of a giveaway. You can't really afford to rile people up as a professional footballer, it's not good for $$$.
Messi isn't just making $54 million a year, though. He's taking a cut from Adidas and from Apple TV, counting on a MLS expansion, which is already happening.
@@declangaming24 no, he'll get a share of inter miami. the most valuable MLS team was worth 1 billion and that was before messi chose MLS and values have been rising for years and are expected to rise further. so now that messi joined inter miami, it will probably be worth more than that. and it could very realistically rise to 2 billion (or more) when he retires. he will get a good share of that, no idea how much, but he will be a minority owner, but that could still be several hundred million. they won't give him a new franchise, first this would mean that MLS and not his club pays him. second, it is impractical. they would need to expand the league, messi would need to make large investments in the team, either with his own money or by getting investors in (which means he would sell part of the club). third, i doubt he wants to run a club, it's much easier for him to just own part of it and profit from the investment. he can still work for the club, but would be free in choosing his role. i think he isn't the guy who wants to become a business man, but will stay involved with the sports side of that business
@@NR-fd9wv your right but I think after he's done playing or coming towards the end of his carrer he will play or buy newells old boys and go all out to win the libertadores
Great video! I'd love to see a mock video telling us quotes and reasons why the players did or did not go to a Saudi club. The start with Vardy was great, you really had me going!
That Lukaku story didn’t exactly go down like that. Inter were getting closer to reaching Chelseas demands however when Inters Sporting director called him to inform him about this, he didn’t answer. He also didn’t answer Lautaros calls. It turned out he was negotiating with Juventus (who ultimately didn’t make an offer) and once Inter got a hold of this, the transfer was off the table
Vardy was great in his prime, but his measly 3 goals from 37 appearances last season suggest that he is sadly a spent force. A move would have made sense for him and perhaps even for the club if the transfer fee was high enough, but I understand that he didn't want (his family) to live in Saudi Arabia.
It's cute that you're saying that now that Europe is being affected, like it hasn't been doing the exact same to South America and Africa for at least 50 years...
I wouldn't put it past Jamie Vardy to not go to Saudi Arabia simply cause he couldn't get flat out drunk. I mean, there's probably more to it, but it is Jamie Vardy, so 😂😂😂
With enough money you can easily get drunk in places like Dubai. Just don't kick up a sh!tstorm in a drunken stupor. Though even then the Saudi's can take a hike.
I renew my petition for you to include international subtitles for your videos. I volunteer for Spanish, but just having them would be great for me and my football loving non-English speaking family.
If you hit settings wheel in top right, choose Captions, then choose Auto Translate, then choose Spanish (or whatever) it should be mostly accurate but I can't be sure. Alfie's audio and pronunciation seem clear to me so it should be finem
@@YesOkayButWhy from my experience auto translate is of questionable quality, it can struggle with things like grammar, names or homophones for example. Admittedly the latter two are more of an issue of auto generated captions in general, but it gets worse with translation because the context of "these words sound the same" can easily get lost. Everything after this just serves as an illustration of my point, feel free to skip if you're familiar with the joys of auto translated auto generated subtitles. Here's an example of a dubious translation from German to English (so we get to a translation everybody in the comments should understand), the video in question is Mainz 05 vs Stuttgart highlights (1st German video I saw on my home page). I added punctuation so it's maybe somewhat more comprehensible than the "raw" subtitles but it felt necessary to compensate for the missing context of audio and timing. "Mainz in Roth against Stuttgart, the guests full of spectacle so far, the hosts the complete opposite: 17th place. First scene 9 minutes the only five looking for their form. So he can tackle the topic, Marco Richter with the strong action, the Stuttgart keeper Nübel also with very good ones Grades completed." Obviously they didn't play in the Bavarian town of Roth (triathlon enjoyers might've heard of this one) and the third sentence is barely coherent. Note that this was commentary specifically recorded for the highlights for public broadcasting so the auto generated subtitles don't suffer from weird cuts or poor audio quality. Now think of dealing with this for an entire video and keep in mind that a lot of languages have significantly larger grammatical differences with English than German does.
That's way different to actually moving to Saudi with your family and promoting their league. Messi continued playing in Europe whilst being an ambassador, before moving to U.S!
@@sepehr.javaheri he is doing more promoting than anyone for Saudi Arabia and its even putting his money where his mouth is by living there he is as bad if not worse
thank you alfie, for not only the usually informative and interesting video, but also for again satirically taking apart the moronic logic of “too much money to turn down”.
I’d suggest you should cover the story of meteoric rise of Mauro Icardi who also rejected lucrative salary and decided to stay at Turkey as he claimed that he is “truly loved” in here and stated his wish to continue playing for Galatasaray. Fans worship him and he does deliver best of him every week in and out. 😊
The Chinese league though was much less lucrative. These Saudi offers are way more then the CSL ever did. The best players the Chinese league had were like Paulinho and Oscar and an ancient Tevez, not Ronaldo, Mane etc.
@@xcf5587 tbf Mane and Ronaldo could be considered ancient aswell... however players like Milinkovic Savic, Neves, Fofana, Kessie, Ibanez, Laporte and Veiga are top players who still had surely lot to do in Europe
Off topic for this but you need to make a video on the Spain women's world champions and the RFEF who seem to actively hate them - I know the Ruibales situation has had a lot of press but this is the tip of the iceberg.
Cool but you got the entire Lukaku story wrong. It's not that Inter didn't have the money to buy him, he just literally ghosted them when the deal was almost done, he decided to turn off his phone and ignore all calls from Inter. That's because at the same time he was in talks with Juventus, Inter's greatest rival. In the end Vlahovic didn't leave Juve so the Lukaku deal failed but you can guess how Inter fans felt after that. After all the foolish declarations he made when he joined Chelsea, Inter was still willing to give him a chance. In his second stint at Inter he was shit for almost all the season (except for the last two months) but Inter was still ready to give him another chance. And that's how he repays them, trying to join the biggest rivals (oh and he even received racial insult from some Juve fans last season so this just proves that he is a person with no morals). Not just Inter fans, but everyone here in Italy (except Roma fans) hates him.
Soooo you just did the research yourself, nice. Can you show me a source or something? Ooo and don't send me some article or some Ig post, send me the real story you found, because clearly Alfie (an expert) got the story wrong. So help me pls and send me the information you found under you bed pls.
@@stefanmihordea3854 Mate this is widely known. Google it yourself and you'll see. You're implying the OP is pushing some crackpot theory - it's not at all. It's the very widely reported truth. Surprised at Alfie, he's normally very well informed.
@@stefanmihordea3854Lmao why are you taking this so personally? You can see in the comments here, a lot of people know this story and saying Alfie got it wrong. He isn’t an expert either, he’s just a researched UA-camr..
Surely got to be what an earth is going on at Sheff Wed! Gone from the highs of turning the biggest playoff semi final deficit around, a last kick of the game extra time winner against Barnsley to parting ways with Moore and only picking up 1 point out of the 1st 6 games and no win in 8 competitive games, not to mention all the batshit statements the chairman is putting out and the Marvin Johnson situation involving the PFA against the club. Surely not any clubs in as much turmoil?
Mbappe also rejected in favour of staying at PSG until Real Madrid come calling which they will at some point. Also seeing Lukaku in that West Brom Shirt we could have had him we wanted him he was fantastic for us.
Piotr Zielinski, beind the opposite to Gabri Veiga, refused Saudi Arabia to stay at Napoli and earn more than 5 times less, a number that could increase if, as it seems he will do, he will accept a reduced wage for his new contract.
I’m only 2 minutes in and there’s already a lie about how much messi will earn, messi gets a share of a new mls team, money from apple and various other sources which meant the deal was worth more than what the Saudi league offered
1:12 don't forget that Messi didn't even go to a huge market like NYFC, New York Red Bulls, LAFC, LA Galaxy or even the other big market teams such as Philadelphia Union, Chicago Fire, Dallas FC, New England Revolution, San Jose Earthquakes, or DC United but instead went to mid-market Inter Miami in a city known for not supporting their teams strongly.
After you consider the cut of Apple and Adidas Messi gets plus the possibility of him getting equity in Inter Miami after he retires in the long run he'll probably make more money then he could've gotten in Saudi Arabia.
Always liked Lukaku (mostly for his comedic approach to football) but this definitely seals his fate as a hero in my book. Also, I feel like Son was the kid in school who did his homework even when the teacher said she wasn't going to check, just a great dude.
It's funny to see hypocrites condemning footballers for choosing their workplace based solely on compensation, however these same "idealists" would gladly leave their current jobs for a 1000% pay bump at a rival firm or in a country like Saudi Arabia.
Mourinho doesn't turn down money, he turns down bad opportunities. Mourinho probably doesn't see the Saudi League as the right destination as he had a project to finish at Roma
Lukaku one is wrong. Had ongoing conversations with Juve which started prior to CL final. Kept talking to Juve during Inter and Chelsea discussions and after that deteriorated. Didn’t get his move to Juve due to the offer not being enough for Chelsea at €38m euro and the other deal not appealing, Vlahovic for Lukaku and money. Refused Saudi as they weren’t offering him enough money.
3:17 Reading what Vardy said. I thought when I read the first line that it sounded almost too professional for him to have written himself. Got to the club I hadn’t heard of since Tuesday and realised it was. And he has just become one of my favourite footballers in the space of a few seconds. Oh it was written by someone else. 😅 I will say Son has to be my favourite. He just seems like an all round decent guy who would be brilliant for any team. So when I found out he’d turned down a move to Saudi, I wasn’t surprised. He’s probably the example of integrity in football and I have huge respect for him. Please don’t let me live to regret this comment 😆 But if he did end up going next season. I think he would at least have the integrity to just say it’s about the money. You know he’d hopefully be the exact opposite of a certain former Liverpool player that I can’t remember the name of at this Henderson, Jordan Henderson.
Messi earns 30 million a year from Saudi tourism to promote the country and has been doing so for nearly a decade now like his idol Maradona was. He's not exactly on some moral high horse here.
The Ramos one is funny. The amount of social media posts online claiming he's some sort of hero for 'just' accepting €2m per year at Sevilla has been through the roof It's great that he's at his boyhood club and he rejected massive money in the Middle East, but he's clearly not there for charitable reasons.
Exactly, Salah knew that, as the top Muslim football star of all time, he would have been treated like royalty everywhere he went in Saudi, but turned it down to stay with Liverpool...
Alfie: ".... disregard for maximising his earnings ..." Politicians: "wait, that's an option?" 😱 Lobbyists: "No, don't listen, he makes funny jokes... hahaha...haha...ha..." 😑
As a Leicester fan who has followed our transfer window very intently, it was very funny to hear the fake quote about Vards. I remember interest in him from Trabzonspor moreso than Saudi Arabia, so I was instantly like, this didn’t happen.
I'm happy to see we don't agree on the KSA matter. The only issue is that players don't assume publicly it's for money while we know it's the case. But we've done to South America what KSA is doing to Europe : using money to attract the best players. Many South American players, after getting big salaries in Europe, return to their native country. Before the Bosman rule, European leagues weren't broadcast in South America. Of course, not everybody think about money since Francesco Totti turned down Real Madrid. Not a Saudi or Chinese club, Real Madrid. The best team in the world because for him, playing for his boyhood club was more important. Alexander Song went to FC Barcelona while knowing he would be in the bench only for money. And it's not like Europe has the best moral on Earth.
@@dr.strangelove4665 Have you ever watched a game between two club teams outside of Europe? Asian club football isn't European club football but it's far from being ridiculous.
@@stanyamish3996 just looking at the goals that are shared ever since this nonsense started lol. You can effectively walk your way into a 1v1 situation with the keeper
@fairphoneuser9009 yes, he made a different choice. He is 100% self obsessed so will have only considered himself in the choice - big fish in a small pond is perfect for him right now. He can be the biggest footballer in the continent again! He has always been very focused on being the best paid.
how the hellis mbappe being offered a BILLION for a one season deal, with the expectation from the saudi end that it was always going to be just one season, not on this list. theres no way you just forgot about it
Just watching this Video now seeing Diaby makes the list and a year later joining a Saudi club is just sad, especially for a young player just entering his prime
AYYYYY, Alfie Gang 🖤as usual, we here. A lot of love from Chile 🌶, my guy. You've been such a source of knowledge and entertainment for me these last months. Love your witty humour and how well researched and objective you are with everything you share. Still hoping for some video about my country, just saying...👀
Hey, Alfie! How are you doing? I'm a Brazilian fan of your work. I always admired the fact that you never had any reservations about go deep into politics, history and culture in football. And since I feel like this channel is a space where we can have a good discussion about that kind of thing, I would like to offer a political comment about something that a I have noticed, specially in videos like this arpund here. For what I have watched of your content to this day, I assume you hold a Left-wing position, just like me. Recently, you have been talking a lot about the Saudi Pro League and the country of Saudi Arabia as a whole. Now, just to bem absolutely clear right from the gate: I don't have any reason or desire to defend the Saudi regime or their current strategy in football. However, I feel like the criticism you've been doing is carrying, perhaps inadvertenly, a lot of double standards, moral superiority complex and a bit of "euro/westerncentric" outlook, that's really recurrent in a Petit-burgeoise/progressive Left, specially in the Global North. The beggining of this video (the vídeo concept as whole, really) is an example: Lionel Messi should be praised because he didn't gave in to the Saudi money, therefore not participating in a sportswashing move to a brutal and horrible human-rights violating country, unlike those other money whores players. No, he just went to make millions of dollars in the USA, the most Imperialist country on earth, who spounsers Coup's, Wars, the Sabotage of Global South economies, and an extense range of atrocities, inside and outside their borders. Do you see where I'm going with this? The same can be applied to the Uk and the rest of the center of Global Capitalism. There's an attitude surrounding your videos that puts the Global North - while imperfect and problematic - on a moral pedestal, in comparison with the "truly autoritarian" regimes in other corners of the world. Not realizing that the Capitalist exploitation and Imperialism of the "First world" are often the roots of that oppression, in the First place. It seems like that old "Civilized/Barbarian" dichotomy, but with countries that are portrayed as the bastian of democracy, freedom and so on, against those who are unmistakenly monstrous blood-thirsty regimes. The Usa, Uk France, Germany, Australia and etc, can violate as many human rights as possible, and the great Burgeoise media will never label them directly as dictarorships, genocidal, or whatever. Just to conclude: apperentely many europeans were not really bothered by money dictating football when they were snatching all the best talents from other continents, weakening South América, for example. Oh well, I would like to ser your take on everything I said, Alfie. I'm still a big fan of your work, and I don't wish this to came across as accusation that you never criticize Western nations, because I know that's not true. Have a Nice day 😁
Thanks. I wish your continent would keep their local talent. Just seeing Dimitri Payet with Vasco da Gama is warming my heart and I hope more French players will come to Fluminense, Flamengo, Internacional, River Plate, Peñarol, etc. Because Griezmann loves Uruguay, I hope he'll play in Uruguay for at least one season.
Thank you for pointing out this money isn’t life changing for people who are already multimillionaires and will be comfortable the rest of their lives nor will their children ever have to work or stress. I can’t stand hearing that excuse, if these guys are so bad with money they can’t take care of their families with 20, 30, 40, 50+ millions of euros then what makes people think doubling that will matter? This is about unfettered greed plain and simple.
Son turned down Saudi Arabia after a season where everyone thought he’d declined to stay and captain Tottenham. He’s currently in talks to extend his deal at the club aswell, fantastic to see loyalty staying strong in the sport.
It's a bit early to say, but Tottenham look really good this season, I think Ange is the kind of long term deal manager these declining big clubs are in need of
Even if he ends up winning nothing in his career, he will be remembered for sure.
For me, I think Son leaving the club would have hurt more than Kane. With Kane it was always an inevitability, a matter of when not of. But Son, for whatever reason, is almost never linked to any moves away, no other club has ever seriously tried to take him.
And I’m not gonna complain about that. He’s been a brilliant player for us, deserves that armband, and clearly is happy to stay.
He went to tottenham also thanks to money tho
@@ironclad-m3q you mean even though he'll end up winning nothing in his career.
Mbappe should be on this list, his offer of 770m for one season was just absolutely absurd.
Exactly, how he's not in this list?
@@vlad6331I think bc everyone knows about it
Because he plays for a team owned by Qatar
@warrenliu5079 so did Sergio Ramos and messi, and they made the list.
@@saniwadayeah...
Please do a What on earth is going on at Ajax… Dusan Tadic left due to poor leadership and investment. Currently 12th after their 3-1 loss to Twente last night. It seems that their youth players haven’t produced recently as well…
This
Not to mention that the manager and technical director seem to be at each other's throats not even a month into the campaign. Even more bizarre is that the new manager knew that the deal was that the new TD was going to go out and find players and that the manager's job was to form a team from what he got. Now the manager is complaining to the media that he didnt get he player he personally wanted. Wild stuff.
The TD bought a dozen of young players whom were mostly offered 5-year contracts. As an Ajax youth player, that now means you have no future at the club. I don't understand how a club can let something like that happen.
Firing Overmars (the politically correct thing to do) was a huge blow. That makes the whole story even better material for Alfie, haha!
Son actually quoted Sung Yong Ki, the former KR national team captain who used to play for Swansea, saying "Like Ki said, the captain of Korea doesn't go to play in China." That was chills.
hardest Football quote in a looong looong time
thx for sharing :D
@@gzs7483Saudi slowly just become what China is. Their performing poorly in their Asian cup campaign. And the problem is their top team conquered by foreign player and more worst their player don't abroad from their league
Di Maria really didn't have a bad season at United; before moving to United, he wasn't known for scoring goals, rather his build up play, and assists... And it showed in that sole season with us, 3 league goals, and 10 league assists in 27 league games... It wasn't great, but it was nowhere near terrible... Too bad he wanted out.
I think part of the reason Di Maria wanted to leave Man United is because his home was broken into by robbers!!
I look at goal scorers like singers in a band. You are nothing without your defenders and bandmates, but you get all the credit. In fact. You do the least work. Source. I am the singer.
He was good at first half of a season and bad at the second.
@@henrimarjoan7876which exactly coincided with his home being broken into.
@@h2ohydroxyea, he clearly didn't have much fun in England. I don't think his English is very strong.
Already paid £100k a week but goes to Saudi to ‘support their family’ 😂
I guess famous footballers do get around so….
generational wealth, football career is short if you want to live rich life style till death you need good investments or hundreds of million, life is long
@@SugarRayValentine you are able to generate generational wealth with wages from europe tho...
@@villek3722 not really mate a lot of athletes go broke after retirement their lifestyle is expensive can’t be maintained without big income
@@SugarRayValentine they go broke bc they spend their money on stupid investments... saudi money doesnt save them from going broke if they spend stupidly
It's not like Lukaku couldn't join Inter, though. He could. But he then started to talk to Juventus instead after saying he only wanted Inter earlier, and it angered Inter and they withdrew their offer. So essentially Lukaku scuppered his own move and had to go to Roma on loan as a last resort. Still nice he rejected Saudi but... the story is quite different.
Yeah....and Lukaku was mad at Inter because Inzaghi didn't start him in UCL final
so you did the research like Alfie did and didn't believe what you so online ha? O wait you didn't, haaa funny. Pls just don't type lies online, you make a fool of yourself.
@@abhishekbisht3032 And you are just the same. What a shame.
Nice one Sonny, nice one Son! Always liked the guy. Modric and Di Maria too. Great players and nice to see they are great guys too.
Kasper Schmeichel deserves to be mentioned more than any other player... he rejected a Saudi offer in favor of Anderlecht where he'll make around £200,000 a year. That's slightly less than a 2 weeks pay from his previous employer Nice.
Fair play to Lukaku, I'd of thought he'd have been a perfect Saudi candidate. Vardy on the other hand is the least Saudi guy ever.
*I'd HAVE thought. this is top 3 annoying typos in English, ugh
What about Neymar? I think he is known to have a similar lifestyle.
@@maciejbala477 Not sure how it's a typo bud, I'm first language Welsh and the direct translation if I'd of thought. From "fyswn i'n meddwl". You continue to police us though. 🤣
Lukaku wants to live in Italy
He's probably been on Saudi radar ever since his rainbow flag-kicking antics...
A.k.a. 7 people Henderson should want to emulate.
My respect for these players: 📈📈📈📈
Ronaldo worth all these players and your mom
I completely believed the vardy quote. Your best made up quote to date, Alfie.
The 'albeit from a club that I had never heard of until Tuesday' was a bit of a giveaway. You can't really afford to rile people up as a professional footballer, it's not good for $$$.
@@z01t4n
Henderson riled up a lot of people and it was great for his $$$
@@z01t4nalthough i agree with the rile up thing - I somehow doubt that Vardy REALLY cares about stuff like that
Messi isn't just making $54 million a year, though. He's taking a cut from Adidas and from Apple TV, counting on a MLS expansion, which is already happening.
Messi will get his own MLS club when he calls it a day what would it be called and where would it be located Texas FC ,Inter colorado FC ect
@@declangaming24 no, he'll get a share of inter miami. the most valuable MLS team was worth 1 billion and that was before messi chose MLS and values have been rising for years and are expected to rise further. so now that messi joined inter miami, it will probably be worth more than that. and it could very realistically rise to 2 billion (or more) when he retires. he will get a good share of that, no idea how much, but he will be a minority owner, but that could still be several hundred million. they won't give him a new franchise, first this would mean that MLS and not his club pays him. second, it is impractical. they would need to expand the league, messi would need to make large investments in the team, either with his own money or by getting investors in (which means he would sell part of the club). third, i doubt he wants to run a club, it's much easier for him to just own part of it and profit from the investment. he can still work for the club, but would be free in choosing his role. i think he isn't the guy who wants to become a business man, but will stay involved with the sports side of that business
@@NR-fd9wv your right but I think after he's done playing or coming towards the end of his carrer he will play or buy newells old boys and go all out to win the libertadores
@@NR-fd9wvhe got the same deal as Beckham, in which he has the ability to make a team and be part of the mls like inter miami
@@declangaming24in Argentina you can't buy clubs.
My respect for all of these players has increased massively. I feel like De Gea rejected Saudi too since he would have already been there by now
Great video!
I'd love to see a mock video
telling us quotes and reasons why the players did or did not go to a Saudi club.
The start with Vardy was great, you really had me going!
Wojciech Szczesny had one of the best responses to the question of Saudi football, simply stating "I already have enough money".
Just a small correction Alfie, Benfica beat Porto in the supercup 2-0, not 3-2.
unsubscribed
I can't blame you.
That Lukaku story didn’t exactly go down like that. Inter were getting closer to reaching Chelseas demands however when Inters Sporting director called him to inform him about this, he didn’t answer. He also didn’t answer Lautaros calls. It turned out he was negotiating with Juventus (who ultimately didn’t make an offer) and once Inter got a hold of this, the transfer was off the table
Have to respect Vardy for staying at Leicester, they should build a statue of him a club man all the way. And im not even a Leicester fan.
Exactly. He even rejected a move to arsenal when he was like 28 or 29.
@@jegerm6752 I think he was worried after coming up the leagues he basically owe Leicester everything.
Vardy was great in his prime, but his measly 3 goals from 37 appearances last season suggest that he is sadly a spent force. A move would have made sense for him and perhaps even for the club if the transfer fee was high enough, but I understand that he didn't want (his family) to live in Saudi Arabia.
Statues are ridiculous
I respect them a lot, money is destroying football.
indeed it is, mada ne bi bilo loše da naši klubovi imaju malo više para hahaha
No money no (commercial) football in reality
@@isaacfung622 That's not true, football was doing fine until it became a big corporate business.
Ironic that the ridiculously high salaries on offer ALL started at the EPL.
It's cute that you're saying that now that Europe is being affected, like it hasn't been doing the exact same to South America and Africa for at least 50 years...
Surprised not to see Mbappé.
I wouldn't put it past Jamie Vardy to not go to Saudi Arabia simply cause he couldn't get flat out drunk. I mean, there's probably more to it, but it is Jamie Vardy, so 😂😂😂
Shithousing probably doesn't go down well in the Em!rates
With enough money you can easily get drunk in places like Dubai. Just don't kick up a sh!tstorm in a drunken stupor. Though even then the Saudi's can take a hike.
I renew my petition for you to include international subtitles for your videos. I volunteer for Spanish, but just having them would be great for me and my football loving non-English speaking family.
You can do it manually
If you hit settings wheel in top right, choose Captions, then choose Auto Translate, then choose Spanish (or whatever) it should be mostly accurate but I can't be sure. Alfie's audio and pronunciation seem clear to me so it should be finem
Fine*
I'm not a native speaker but I do know Spanish and the auto-generated subtitles seem to be pretty good
@@YesOkayButWhy from my experience auto translate is of questionable quality, it can struggle with things like grammar, names or homophones for example. Admittedly the latter two are more of an issue of auto generated captions in general, but it gets worse with translation because the context of "these words sound the same" can easily get lost. Everything after this just serves as an illustration of my point, feel free to skip if you're familiar with the joys of auto translated auto generated subtitles.
Here's an example of a dubious translation from German to English (so we get to a translation everybody in the comments should understand), the video in question is Mainz 05 vs Stuttgart highlights (1st German video I saw on my home page). I added punctuation so it's maybe somewhat more comprehensible than the "raw" subtitles but it felt necessary to compensate for the missing context of audio and timing.
"Mainz in Roth against Stuttgart, the guests full of spectacle so far, the hosts the complete opposite: 17th place. First scene 9 minutes the only five looking for their form. So he can tackle the topic, Marco Richter with the strong action, the Stuttgart keeper Nübel also with very good ones Grades completed."
Obviously they didn't play in the Bavarian town of Roth (triathlon enjoyers might've heard of this one) and the third sentence is barely coherent. Note that this was commentary specifically recorded for the highlights for public broadcasting so the auto generated subtitles don't suffer from weird cuts or poor audio quality. Now think of dealing with this for an entire video and keep in mind that a lot of languages have significantly larger grammatical differences with English than German does.
Thumb's up bro (mate)! Watching full commercials too.
Messi did accept a 100million to be saudi tourism ambassador
That's way different to actually moving to Saudi with your family and promoting their league.
Messi continued playing in Europe whilst being an ambassador, before moving to U.S!
@@sepehr.javaheri he is doing more promoting than anyone for Saudi Arabia and its even putting his money where his mouth is by living there he is as bad if not worse
@@od9694That is factually incorrect. Messi is not the face of Saudi Arabia and hasn't promoted their league.
@@sepehr.javaheri he hasn't promoted the league he has promoted the Country
@@od9694 Thought we were on the topic of football and not sponsorships and tourism 😂
thank you alfie, for not only the usually informative and interesting video, but also for again satirically taking apart the moronic logic of “too much money to turn down”.
I’d suggest you should cover the story of meteoric rise of Mauro Icardi who also rejected lucrative salary and decided to stay at Turkey as he claimed that he is “truly loved” in here and stated his wish to continue playing for Galatasaray. Fans worship him and he does deliver best of him every week in and out. 😊
Alfie, I don't think I see enough praise for your comedic bits in your videos 😂you're funny fam. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Moussa diaby has now gone to the Saudi league this transfer window
If there's an unlikely rogueish hero of modern British football, it's Jamie Vardy.
Sergio Ramos going back to Sevilla is such a cool story.
Didn’t know Toni Kroos was such an honest savage 🤣
Big respect to all the footballers who said "no"
Nah
Alfie, I really love your introductions.
haha nice one on the vardy bit, laughed out loud !!
This is the china problem playing out again, ridiculous wages and fees while trying to buy interest in football
Will go same way as China
Some hand wringing and eventually ending up being nothing
The Chinese league though was much less lucrative. These Saudi offers are way more then the CSL ever did. The best players the Chinese league had were like Paulinho and Oscar and an ancient Tevez, not Ronaldo, Mane etc.
@@xcf5587 tbf Mane and Ronaldo could be considered ancient aswell... however players like Milinkovic Savic, Neves, Fofana, Kessie, Ibanez, Laporte and Veiga are top players who still had surely lot to do in Europe
They'll be back when the house of cards collapses.@@villek3722
Respect to everyone who puts ethics above money
Tbf it's probably not all down to their ethics, lots of them probably just want to still play at the highest level and compete for major trophies
@@ethandalton6480 for sure, but that is a good thing too
I wonder what the ethics of working for an oil monarchy owned club in Europe are compared to playing for an oil monarchy owned club in
Middle East.
Greatest football documentaries on UA-cam
Off topic for this but you need to make a video on the Spain women's world champions and the RFEF who seem to actively hate them - I know the Ruibales situation has had a lot of press but this is the tip of the iceberg.
Spanish men bitter that women have overtaken them😔
Cool but you got the entire Lukaku story wrong. It's not that Inter didn't have the money to buy him, he just literally ghosted them when the deal was almost done, he decided to turn off his phone and ignore all calls from Inter. That's because at the same time he was in talks with Juventus, Inter's greatest rival. In the end Vlahovic didn't leave Juve so the Lukaku deal failed but you can guess how Inter fans felt after that. After all the foolish declarations he made when he joined Chelsea, Inter was still willing to give him a chance. In his second stint at Inter he was shit for almost all the season (except for the last two months) but Inter was still ready to give him another chance. And that's how he repays them, trying to join the biggest rivals (oh and he even received racial insult from some Juve fans last season so this just proves that he is a person with no morals). Not just Inter fans, but everyone here in Italy (except Roma fans) hates him.
Soooo you just did the research yourself, nice. Can you show me a source or something? Ooo and don't send me some article or some Ig post, send me the real story you found, because clearly Alfie (an expert) got the story wrong. So help me pls and send me the information you found under you bed pls.
@@stefanmihordea3854u sound fat as hell
@@stefanmihordea3854 Mate this is widely known. Google it yourself and you'll see. You're implying the OP is pushing some crackpot theory - it's not at all. It's the very widely reported truth. Surprised at Alfie, he's normally very well informed.
@@stefanmihordea3854Lmao why are you taking this so personally? You can see in the comments here, a lot of people know this story and saying Alfie got it wrong. He isn’t an expert either, he’s just a researched UA-camr..
Awwwww, millionaires weren't given any option, how unfair, cuz they were offered even more money than they already make.
@MomPickMeUpImScared-st4wi
They'll have to track me down first.
You’re the best again ❤
Great video.
Laser guided as usual Alfie. Keep on keeping on mate
Where is Salah?
For this video at least, honourable mentions are literally correct
“Albeit from a club I’ve never heard of until Tuesday” 😂
Surely got to be what an earth is going on at Sheff Wed! Gone from the highs of turning the biggest playoff semi final deficit around, a last kick of the game extra time winner against Barnsley to parting ways with Moore and only picking up 1 point out of the 1st 6 games and no win in 8 competitive games, not to mention all the batshit statements the chairman is putting out and the Marvin Johnson situation involving the PFA against the club. Surely not any clubs in as much turmoil?
He’s already done it
Let's not forget Ciro Immobile here, he also turned down an offer from Saudi Arabia and remained at Lazio instead.
Mbappe also rejected in favour of staying at PSG until Real Madrid come calling which they will at some point. Also seeing Lukaku in that West Brom Shirt we could have had him we wanted him he was fantastic for us.
Piotr Zielinski, beind the opposite to Gabri Veiga, refused Saudi Arabia to stay at Napoli and earn more than 5 times less, a number that could increase if, as it seems he will do, he will accept a reduced wage for his new contract.
I’m only 2 minutes in and there’s already a lie about how much messi will earn, messi gets a share of a new mls team, money from apple and various other sources which meant the deal was worth more than what the Saudi league offered
Good video as always except for the Di Maria part haha. Can we please have a video about Maltese Football ⚽ Thank you
1:12 don't forget that Messi didn't even go to a huge market like NYFC, New York Red Bulls, LAFC, LA Galaxy or even the other big market teams such as Philadelphia Union, Chicago Fire, Dallas FC, New England Revolution, San Jose Earthquakes, or DC United but instead went to mid-market Inter Miami in a city known for not supporting their teams strongly.
He went because of Beckham offering him a cut Inter Miami.
@@fox2569 that’s very true and not really talked about
Can you please do a video on Ajax! 14th in the Eredivise 13 points off the league leaders
If the saudis come up with the right price youd sell this channel in a heartbeat
14:04 just when I thought I was safe for a second
can’t have shit on the internet lmao
Where is salah ?
Exactly
Saudi living rent free in your head lmaooo
Wilfried Zaha should probably deserve an honourable mention as well…
After you consider the cut of Apple and Adidas Messi gets plus the possibility of him getting equity in Inter Miami after he retires in the long run he'll probably make more money then he could've gotten in Saudi Arabia.
Always liked Lukaku (mostly for his comedic approach to football) but this definitely seals his fate as a hero in my book. Also, I feel like Son was the kid in school who did his homework even when the teacher said she wasn't going to check, just a great dude.
7 players with higher ethics than Jordan Henderson
Aaron Ramsey also rejected Saudi (I think it was Al-Ettifaq) for a return to Cardiff City
£300,000,000/s - converting travelling photons into sterling I see
apparently lukaku was also in talks with juventus while saying how much he wanted to stay at inter 😅
It's funny to see hypocrites condemning footballers for choosing their workplace based solely on compensation, however these same "idealists" would gladly leave their current jobs for a 1000% pay bump at a rival firm or in a country like Saudi Arabia.
Mourinho took a position as an advisor to the Ahmed Academy so he didn't really turn down Saudi Arabia
Mourinho doesn't turn down money, he turns down bad opportunities. Mourinho probably doesn't see the Saudi League as the right destination as he had a project to finish at Roma
Very informative as always 👍🏼👍🏼
Lukaku one is wrong. Had ongoing conversations with Juve which started prior to CL final. Kept talking to Juve during Inter and Chelsea discussions and after that deteriorated. Didn’t get his move to Juve due to the offer not being enough for Chelsea at €38m euro and the other deal not appealing, Vlahovic for Lukaku and money.
Refused Saudi as they weren’t offering him enough money.
The Saudi clubs need to throw money around to see any results it’s just the rule of the game to be fair
3:17 Reading what Vardy said. I thought when I read the first line that it sounded almost too professional for him to have written himself. Got to the club I hadn’t heard of since Tuesday and realised it was. And he has just become one of my favourite footballers in the space of a few seconds. Oh it was written by someone else. 😅
I will say Son has to be my favourite. He just seems like an all round decent guy who would be brilliant for any team. So when I found out he’d turned down a move to Saudi, I wasn’t surprised. He’s probably the example of integrity in football and I have huge respect for him.
Please don’t let me live to regret this comment 😆
But if he did end up going next season. I think he would at least have the integrity to just say it’s about the money. You know he’d hopefully be the exact opposite of a certain former Liverpool player that I can’t remember the name of at this Henderson, Jordan Henderson.
Messi earns 30 million a year from Saudi tourism to promote the country and has been doing so for nearly a decade now like his idol Maradona was. He's not exactly on some moral high horse here.
Only 7? Literally every player from the argentine WC winning squad rejected them.
Do a video of the downfall of Ajax
May many more refuse to play there.
The Ramos one is funny. The amount of social media posts online claiming he's some sort of hero for 'just' accepting €2m per year at Sevilla has been through the roof
It's great that he's at his boyhood club and he rejected massive money in the Middle East, but he's clearly not there for charitable reasons.
You finally, after so many years, gave me something nice to say about Sergio Ramos. I should get onto Patreon for that alone. But, nah.
Salah should be in this. He could have easily forced through a move to Saudi but chose to stay at lfc
Yes. Even I am surprised that he hasn't included Salah's name in this list. Salah and Liverpool had the most pressure from Saudi Pro League.
Exactly, Salah knew that, as the top Muslim football star of all time, he would have been treated like royalty everywhere he went in Saudi, but turned it down to stay with Liverpool...
Alfie: ".... disregard for maximising his earnings ..."
Politicians: "wait, that's an option?" 😱
Lobbyists: "No, don't listen, he makes funny jokes... hahaha...haha...ha..." 😑
As a Leicester fan who has followed our transfer window very intently, it was very funny to hear the fake quote about Vards. I remember interest in him from Trabzonspor moreso than Saudi Arabia, so I was instantly like, this didn’t happen.
Dudd Messi is getting like half of MLS apple deal or smt and merch rights too... He will earn a lot more than 50mil.
I'm happy to see we don't agree on the KSA matter. The only issue is that players don't assume publicly it's for money while we know it's the case.
But we've done to South America what KSA is doing to Europe : using money to attract the best players. Many South American players, after getting big salaries in Europe, return to their native country. Before the Bosman rule, European leagues weren't broadcast in South America.
Of course, not everybody think about money since Francesco Totti turned down Real Madrid. Not a Saudi or Chinese club, Real Madrid. The best team in the world because for him, playing for his boyhood club was more important. Alexander Song went to FC Barcelona while knowing he would be in the bench only for money.
And it's not like Europe has the best moral on Earth.
yes, but europe actually plays football, while the KSA plays pretend with a level of football that would get laughed at in the english 4th tier.
@@dr.strangelove4665 Have you ever watched a game between two club teams outside of Europe? Asian club football isn't European club football but it's far from being ridiculous.
@@stanyamish3996 just looking at the goals that are shared ever since this nonsense started lol. You can effectively walk your way into a 1v1 situation with the keeper
@@dr.strangelove4665 well, go ahead and turn pro in South Korea if it's that easy. Or another country.
Messi gets a percentage of all MLS shirt sales and TV rights so his wages are pretty much irrelevant
What motivated you to record this video?
I'm not super well informed but I'm shocked nothings come up about Mo Salah, either offers or rejections
ikr
Footballers with morals
Or who have so much money already that they can prioritise lifestyle and family.
@@uk145Wouldn't that apply to CR7 as well?
CR7 is retired.@@fairphoneuser9009
@@toffeelatte6042 🤣! Yes he definitely is...
@fairphoneuser9009 yes, he made a different choice. He is 100% self obsessed so will have only considered himself in the choice - big fish in a small pond is perfect for him right now. He can be the biggest footballer in the continent again! He has always been very focused on being the best paid.
Nice to give Romelu Lukaku his flowers for once. 😊
He scored yesterday too! He's back! 🤪😝
Change the title to "7 footballers with self awareness" 💯
7☝️
@fairphoneuser9009 ah thanks my bad
how the hellis mbappe being offered a BILLION for a one season deal, with the expectation from the saudi end that it was always going to be just one season, not on this list. theres no way you just forgot about it
I know right!
2:12 Yeahhhh baby that's what I've been waiting for .Acknowledgement of Arabia being Asian instead of middle eastern.
Just watching this Video now seeing Diaby makes the list and a year later joining a Saudi club is just sad, especially for a young player just entering his prime
AYYYYY, Alfie Gang 🖤as usual, we here.
A lot of love from Chile 🌶, my guy. You've been such a source of knowledge and entertainment for me these last months. Love your witty humour and how well researched and objective you are with everything you share.
Still hoping for some video about my country, just saying...👀
When you said that Messi was offered the most lucrative contract, wasn't the offer to Mbappe higher?
Hey, Alfie! How are you doing? I'm a Brazilian fan of your work. I always admired the fact that you never had any reservations about go deep into politics, history and culture in football. And since I feel like this channel is a space where we can have a good discussion about that kind of thing, I would like to offer a political comment about something that a I have noticed, specially in videos like this arpund here. For what I have watched of your content to this day, I assume you hold a Left-wing position, just like me. Recently, you have been talking a lot about the Saudi Pro League and the country of Saudi Arabia as a whole. Now, just to bem absolutely clear right from the gate: I don't have any reason or desire to defend the Saudi regime or their current strategy in football. However, I feel like the criticism you've been doing is carrying, perhaps inadvertenly, a lot of double standards, moral superiority complex and a bit of "euro/westerncentric" outlook, that's really recurrent in a Petit-burgeoise/progressive Left, specially in the Global North.
The beggining of this video (the vídeo concept as whole, really) is an example: Lionel Messi should be praised because he didn't gave in to the Saudi money, therefore not participating in a sportswashing move to a brutal and horrible human-rights violating country, unlike those other money whores players. No, he just went to make millions of dollars in the USA, the most Imperialist country on earth, who spounsers Coup's, Wars, the Sabotage of Global South economies, and an extense range of atrocities, inside and outside their borders. Do you see where I'm going with this? The same can be applied to the Uk and the rest of the center of Global Capitalism. There's an attitude surrounding your videos that puts the Global North - while imperfect and problematic - on a moral pedestal, in comparison with the "truly autoritarian" regimes in other corners of the world. Not realizing that the Capitalist exploitation and Imperialism of the "First world" are often the roots of that oppression, in the First place. It seems like that old "Civilized/Barbarian" dichotomy, but with countries that are portrayed as the bastian of democracy, freedom and so on, against those who are unmistakenly monstrous blood-thirsty regimes. The Usa, Uk France, Germany, Australia and etc, can violate as many human rights as possible, and the great Burgeoise media will never label them directly as dictarorships, genocidal, or whatever.
Just to conclude: apperentely many europeans were not really bothered by money dictating football when they were snatching all the best talents from other continents, weakening South América, for example. Oh well, I would like to ser your take on everything I said, Alfie. I'm still a big fan of your work, and I don't wish this to came across as accusation that you never criticize Western nations, because I know that's not true. Have a Nice day 😁
Brazil also sponsors dictators, so...
Thanks. I wish your continent would keep their local talent. Just seeing Dimitri Payet with Vasco da Gama is warming my heart and I hope more French players will come to Fluminense, Flamengo, Internacional, River Plate, Peñarol, etc. Because Griezmann loves Uruguay, I hope he'll play in Uruguay for at least one season.
Thank you for pointing out this money isn’t life changing for people who are already multimillionaires and will be comfortable the rest of their lives nor will their children ever have to work or stress. I can’t stand hearing that excuse, if these guys are so bad with money they can’t take care of their families with 20, 30, 40, 50+ millions of euros then what makes people think doubling that will matter? This is about unfettered greed plain and simple.
Bravo sir for that Jamie vardy joke! Lol
Alternative title: 7 footballers with a moral compass
The sarcasm in this video 😂😂😂