Milos Milojevic says the rest of Gulf football risks being left behind by Saudi Arabia’s extraordinary spending.
The Al Wasl manager saw his side soundly beaten 4-0 by an Al Nassr team that had a forward line of Cristiano Ronaldo, Sadio Mane and Jhon Duran on Monday night.
He thinks it is still possible to compete with Saudi’s star-laden sides in the AFC Champions League, but that others need to perform at “130 per cent” of their potential to stand a chance.
“I would like to be positive and say we can compete, and I think we can,” said Milojevic, who led Wasl to the UAE double last season.
“[But to do so] we have to be on 120 or 130 per cent. It is known in football that, according to research, the team that spends the most in the top 10 leagues in Europe wins 93 per cent of the time. So over 10 years, they will win 9.3 times.
“So obviously, the investment Saudi is making in football is either going to crush the other Gulf countries, or push them to invest.
“We will see the reaction. I think everyone has the right to do whatever they can in their country, and the only thing I can control is on the pitch.
“Today, we didn’t perform good enough on the pitch, so I won’t go into those things. The quality they have in unquestionable, but I still think we could do a bit better. We need more players who are close to their max and over their max.”
Monday night’s game at the Al Awwal Stadium in Riyadh was a graphic illustration of the fact the Saudi sides are shopping in different markets to the everyone else in Asia.
The Nassr forward line of Duran, Mane and Ronaldo have recent pedigree of playing in Europe’s top leagues. Duran, 21, was making his debut after arriving straight from the Premier League with Aston Villa, in a deal reportedly worth nearly €77 million.
Wasl also had a new signing of their own up front. Joao Pedro is a 31-year-old who arrived during the transfer window on a short-term deal from Al Taawoun in the Saudi Pro League.
While Duran made a number of openings for his new team, Pedro scarcely made an impact. Although that was hardly his fault, seeing as the home team dominated the ball.
“It was not a game that suits him really well because his biggest quality is in the box,” Milojevic said.
“We were not producing many chances inside the box. He had two situations where he tried to finish the attack, but I am not unhappy with him.
“I don’t blame any individual player because it is not an individual sport. We didn’t do enough to get a positive result.”
The standings provide the most obvious evidence of Saudi’s dominance. With Al Hilal still to play their penultimate fixture of the group stage – they host Iran’s Persepolis on Tuesday night – the three Saudi clubs hold the top three positions in the Champions League’s western group.
Al Ain, the defending champions, continued their horror defence of their continental title with defeat at home to Al Rayyan on Monday night. They are last, with just two points from seven matches. Al Wasl are fifth with 11 points from their seven matches.
Ronaldo said last season that the Saudi Pro League is a match for some of the leading competitions in Europe, given the investments that have been made,
After seeing his side ease to victory against Wasl, Stefano Pioli, the manager, was asked where he thinks Nassr would rank if they played in his home league back in Italy.
“It is difficult to compare the Saudi League with Serie A,” Pioli said. “What is more important is that the team is growing all the time.”
The task facing the rest scarcely gets any easier. Wasl will complete the group phase with a home fixture against unbeaten Al Hilal, Saudi’s most dominant side, in two weeks’ time.
“We cannot be happy with the result [against Nassr] because our performance was not consistent,” Milojevic said.
“We made two big mistakes and when we had the chances to punish them, we didn’t make good decisions. If it’s a transition it has to be quick and if we are in possession, we have to keep possession.
“It is very hard because we faced a really good team. To get positive results in those types of games you have to go over the mark, do much better, and I can’t do anything but blame myself and try to fix it for the next game against Hilal.”
