If there’s a common theme to the transfer strategies adopted by the main challengers to title-holders Al Ittihad ahead of the new Saudi Pro League, it’s in their chase for footballers with a winning habit.
Al Hilal, Al Nassr, Al Ahli and Al Qadsiah have all made high-profile swoops for players from the elite leagues of Europe who have claimed prestigious prizes in recent months.
Here’s five decorated newcomers set to shake up the SPL hierarchy.
Darwin Nunez, Al Hilal
Premier League winner 24-25 with Liverpool
The most goal-rich team of the last Saudi Pro League season have boosted their firepower with a striker who already boasts domestic titles in two continents and who is the regular spearhead for his national team, Uruguay.
At 26, Nunez should still have higher peaks to reach. But that's if he smoothes out some rough edges. The argument from Liverpool – who three years ago made Darwin the club’s then most expensive signing, paying €85m to Benfica – is that the forward still looks shy of the cool efficiency they wanted if he was to be a key part of the defence of their Premier League crown.
Nunez contributed significant, timely goals to Liverpool’s 2024/25 title, but was in and out of the starting XI and, after rejecting an approach from Al Nassr for him at the beginning of this year, Liverpool in July accepted that Al Hilal’s offer – in excess of €50m – would be useful in their own substantial summer recruitment.
He left Anfield with a sound enough record – a goal every 186 minutes on the pitch – but, playing alongside as supreme a finisher as Mohamed Salah, he could look a little hit-and-miss. As Arne Slot, the Liverpool manager, put it, Nunez is a forward who “has to be used in a certain way that involves the right timings, the right crosses, the right position to start from, making the right run.”
A project then, for Al Hilal head coach Simone Inzaghi, who has been encouraged by Nunez’s showings in pre-season and has the personnel, in Salem Al Dawsari and the newly arrived attacking left-back Theo Hernandez, to supply the right crosses – if and when the big, feisty Uruguayan is making the right runs.
Joao Felix, Al Nassr
Uefa Nations League winner 2024/25 with Portugal
No footballer of 25 or younger has ever had so much invested in him in transfer fees as Joao Felix. Whether his levels of performance have justified some of those hefty outlays is a matter of debate. The verdict from Chelsea, who sold him to Al Nassr, might be unflattering; the judgement from Atletico Madrid, who made him the most expensive teenager to move across leagues in 2019, would be more nuanced.
Joao Felix’s creative flair helped win Atletico a Spanish title. A falling-out, centred on tactics, with Atletico coach Diego Simeone later set in motion a hop-scotch journey in which Joao Felix’s quick feet and eye-of-a-needle passes have benefited a succession of superclubs only intermittently.
Chelsea had him for two spells, he spent a season each on loan at Barcelona and AC Milan. When he returned from Italy to London this summer, Chelsea made it clear he should seek a new path, Al Nassr paying around €30m for a player who six years earlier had moved from Benfica to Atletico for more than four times as much.
The good news? He’s entitled to believe that, at 25, his best years are to come. Portuguese compatriots still back him, too. Joao Felix has joined the club of Cristiano Ronaldo, whose blessing for any major signing at Al Nassr can be assumed, and will be working under Jorge Jesus, one of Portugal’s most worldly and decorated coaches.
And he’s just won his second Uefa Nations title, albeit from the fringes of the Portugal first team. He wants his Saudi Pro League reboot to push him back up the national side’s hierarchy in time for the 2026 World Cup.
Enzo Millot, Al Ahli
German Cup winner 2024/25 with Stuttgart
Barely 12 months ago, Enzo Millot was scoring the opening goal in an Olympic Games final for France in Paris, selected in coach Thierry Henry’s starting side against Spain ahead of the gifted Paris Saint-Germain prodigy Desire Doue and of Rayan Cherki, new star of Manchester City. There you have a tableau of how highly Millot, captured by Al Ahli amid great competition for his signature from major European clubs, is prized in French football.
The player, having observed in examples such as Al Ittihad’s N’Golo Kante that a move to the Saudi Pro League need not mean disappearing from the radar of France head coach Didier Deschamps, intends to combine his ambition of making Les Bleus’ World Cup squad with stamping his imprint the new Asian club champions.
He is a footballer of nimble dribbles and tricks and a cool finish, as he demonstrated guiding Vfb Stuttgart, whom he joined from Monaco aged 19, to triumph in last season’s German Cup. He scored twice in the final, his second goal, the fourth in a 4-2 win over Arminia Bielefeld, a classy mix of alert pressing and elegant placement.
“He’s a young man with exceptional qualities,” said his coach at Stuttgart, Sebastian Hoeness, as Millot began to attract attention from superclubs elsewhere. Atletico Madrid believed, up until the end of July, they had persuaded the attacking midfielder to be included in their high-spend summer of acquisitions. He had been linked with Tottenham Hotspur. Al Ahli’s gazumping of those suitors represents a coup, a statement given Millot’s age, just 23, and his status within an excellent generation of rising French talents. He has started well, too, making his mark in Al Ahli’s triumph in the Saudi Super Cup.
Mateo Retegui, Al Qadsiah
Serie A capocannoniere (top scorer) 2024/25 with Atalanta
Perhaps the most eye-catching recruit so far in the Saudi Pro League’s summer transfer window, Retegui has joined not a traditional heavyweight but an upwardly mobile disruptor. The fee Al Qadsiah committed to Atalanta – over €68m – for the 26-year-old striker speaks of the ambition of the club.
What they get for their money is the first-choice centre-forward for the Italy national team, or at least that is what Mateo Retegui has become in the two-and-a-half zig-zag years in which he was transformed from mid-table also-ran in Argentina football to hotshot finisher in Serie A, a league with a historic fame for being among the very hardest to score in, because of its high defensive standards. Retegui struck 25 goals in 36 Serie A games in 2024/25 and directly assisted in eight more goals for teammates.
He has a hard act to follow in that, in their first season promoted back to the Saudi top division, Al Qadsiah owed a great deal to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s savvy up front. Aubameyang is now at Olympique Marseille, but, in Retegui, head coach Michel has a marksman who, at 26, is10 years younger than ‘Auba’. And Retegui’s rare backstory should persuade that he is worldly enough to adapt quickly to a new country.
He was born in Argentina, suffered rejection from the biggest clubs there before finding his productive niche at Tigre. And while the Argentina national coaches paid little attention to him, the then Italy manager, Roberto Mancini, altered to the fact Retegui had Italian ancestry and the right to citizenship, called him up in 2023. The rest is history. He shone on his Azzurri debut, kept his place under Mancini’s successor, Luciano Spalletti, joined Genoa, then Atalanta and was being chased by AC Milan when Al Qadsiah stepped in.
Inigo Martinez, Al Nassr
La Liga and Spanish Cup winner 2024/25 with Barcelona
It was with great reluctance that the Spanish champions, Barcelona, said adios to a hero of their exciting 2024/25. “Outstanding as a footballer and as a person, it’s been a pleasure to be his coach,” said Hansi Flick of Martinez, Flick having overseen a young Barca team’s claiming all three domestic titles.
But the coach was always at pains to point out that his youngsters relied on the odd veteran: Martinez had been vital for his courage and knowhow at the centre of a defence which, opting to play in a daring high line, required rigour and superb organisation so they got the geometry of their positioning exactly right.
Martinez, 34, a Spain international who spent most of his club career at Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao in his native Basque Country, had been a key figure in that. “He was very important for all the other players,” said Flick, “He took on our philosophy and was one of our leaders, with his intensity, his desire and his strength.” He could have added that Martinez is a useful target man at attacking set-pieces.
Barcelona had, a year ago, agreed that if an attractive offer came to Martinez, they would let him leave without a fee. Flick would have had it otherwise, but Martinez wanted to try playing abroad. Barca also appreciated that taking his salary off their wage bill would help them register a summer recruit or two and keep within La Liga’s Financial Fair-Play allowances, which, given Barcelona’s accumulated debt, impose tight restrictions on the club’s operating budget.
Martinez will be missed in Catalonia. But Al Nassr have a warrior for their back line and a wise influence on the dressing room.
