Category: 6. Sports

The winners of next season’s AFC Champions League Two, Asia’s second-tier club competition, will receive about £1.8m. The winners of the Saudi King’s Cup will receive just over £1m. Prize money for the Saudi Pro League is not disclosed, but by the most recent available figures (for 2022-23) is in roughly the same area. Weekly attendances at the King Saud University Stadium, where top-tier ticket prices start at about £12, range between 10,000 and 25,000, although of course you also have to factor in pie and programme sales above that.

And so you really have to applaud Al-Nassr’s ambition in handing an estimated £492m to Cristiano Ronaldo over the next two years. Even if they sweep the board at domestic level, if they fight their way past Istiklol of Tajikistan’s 1xBet Higher League and Al-Wehdat of the Jordanian Pro League, if they extract maximum value from merch and sponsorships, you still struggle to see how they can cover a basic salary that comes to £488,000 a day, even before the bonuses and blandishments that will push the total package well beyond that.

According to reports, the deal also involves Ronaldo taking a 15% ownership stake in Al-Nassr, extra incentives for winning the Pro League or the Golden Boot, a private jet allowance, 16 full-time staff including two chefs and three gardeners, and a bonus for every time he successfully presses an opposition player. Last one was a joke, obvs. And amid the stultifying assault of numbers, Ronaldo’s new contract – announced to great fanfare last week – marks a significant shift in the evolution of the superstar athlete, a further blurring of the lines between what we used to call “sport” and what we used to call “the other stuff”.

The first question to put: what exactly is Saudi Arabia getting for its money? Because of course Al-Nassr are a majority fund-owned club, an arm of the Saudi state, which is funnelling untold riches into its domestic league free from the encumbrance of cost controls or financial fair play rules. Ronaldo himself is in effect a Saudi employee, albeit one who has enjoyed much better fortune then most migrant workers who have entered the country in recent years.

On the pitch, Ronaldo’s influence has been highly visible: 99 goals in 111 games under four coaches. Give him a half chance in a tight space and even at the age of 40, there are still few players you would back over him. At the same time Al-Nassr have won no major trophies since his arrival and the club’s two other big attacking talents, Jhon Durán and Sadio Mané, have found themselves overshadowed to such an extent that both may leave this summer. Let’s charitably describe this one as: jury out.

In recent months there was talk of Ronaldo getting a short-term deal to play in the Club World Cup, a competition that would seem perfect for him: based entirely around celebrity power, influencer fame and a distinct lack of running. Politically and commercially, there was literally no reason for this not to happen. And so we can conclude that while many clubs were interested in his star wattage, none were prepared to pay the going rate to remould their entire system around a 40-year-old striker who lost his last half-yard of pace in about 2017.

But of course these days what Ronaldo can do on a football pitch is but a fraction of his total appeal. In an age when power itself is being reimagined along the lines of social media clout, when the attention economy and the actual economy are rapidly converging into one and the same thing, the fact Ronaldo is the most followed person on Instagram – and the third-most followed on X behind Elon Musk and Barack Obama – matters. In a way Ronaldo’s fame renders him a kind of one-man city state, an influencer first and an athlete second, his goals and assists entirely tangential to the eyeballs he can garner in the process.

What we have, in essence, is the professional athlete reimagined as a kind of plutocratic demigod, able to construct entire new realities around themselves. One in which the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia will be “the most beautiful ever”, or where the Saudi Pro League is “one of the top five leagues in the world”, as he recently put it. “It’s highly competitive, and those who don’t know that simply haven’t played here.” Fundamentally, this is not true on any measure: Opta ranks the Saudi Pro League as the world’s 29th best. And of course by his own criteria, Ronaldo would have had to play in all the others in order to make a reasoned assessment. But when you have 659 million Instagram followers, perhaps whatever you say becomes true simply by saying it.

Which is not to say the football is an irrelevance. Football is clearly still inherent to Ronaldo’s self-image, albeit these days more as an adjunct to his power than as the source of it. Ronaldo still plays football in the same way that Donald Trump plays golf: as part of a broader cult of personality, something to get photographed doing, content for the feed. A branding exercise stripped entirely of context or objective judgment, complete with massaged numbers and a coterie of obedient applauding acolytes. As is the continuing fixation on his physique, the positioning of Ronaldo as a kind of Übermensch, a transcendent individual, a higher form of biology, albeit one that still possesses an unerring ability to put free-kicks straight into the wall.

And so Al-Nassr (and to a lesser extent the Portuguese national team) are no longer paying for Ronaldo the footballer. What they’re buying is Ronaldo the spiritual leader, the attention machine, the aura, the abdominals, the soft-power influence. They’re buying a place on his grid, the opportunity to allow one of the world’s most famous men to do their bidding. Perhaps it helps to think of his new contract as a kind of trade deal, a strategic alliance between two cynical regimes drunk on their own power and with largely congruent social views.

“I belong to Saudi Arabia,” Ronaldo stated proudly on announcing his new contract last week. And of course many star athletes in many sports have succumbed to the lure of the Saudi riyal, and will continue to do so. But there is a tonal difference between taking the money of a rogue state and actively advocating for them on the broadest possible stage. For years we have spoken of Saudi investment as a kind of moral dilemma, a fine balance of pecuniary motives, reputational concerns and human rights. For Ronaldo, it is clear that no such dilemma exists.

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Holders Bordeaux-Begles and last season’s finalists Northampton Saints have been drawn in Pool 4 for the 2025-26 Investec Champions Cup.

In May, Bordeaux defeated Saints 28-20 in Cardiff to lift their first Champions Cup title.

Premiership semi-finalists Bristol Bears, Scarlets, Top 14 side Pau and United Rugby Championship (URC) runners-up Bulls are also in Pool 4.

Three-time winners Saracens are in Pool 1 alongside record six-time champions Toulouse.

They are joined by Glasgow Warriors, Sale Sharks, Clermont Auvergne and South African side Sharks.

Premiership champions Bath, who won last year’s Challenge Cup, are in Pool 2 with Munster, Gloucester, Edinburgh, Castres and three-time winners Toulon.

In Pool 3, Leinster, who lost to Northampton in last year’s semi final, again are drawn in the same pool as Ronan O’Gara’s La Rochelle, who defeated the Irish province in back-to-back finals in 2022 and 2023.

Leo Cullen’s team squeezed past the Top 14 side 16-14 in last year’s pool stage.

Leicester Tigers and Harlequins are also in Pool 3, with Bayonne and South African side Stormers.

Each team will play four different opponents in the pool stage, but not teams from their own league, with fixtures still to be announced.

In the Challenge Cup, Ulster, who finished 14th in last season’s URC have been drawn in the same pool as Parisian rivals Racing 92 and Stade Francais in Pool 3.

Ospreys and Connacht have a kinder draw in Pool 1, which contains Georgian side Black Lion.

From Texas to Iceland – Natasha Anasi-Erlingsson’s football journey to the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 has been one of a kind.

A little more than 10 years ago, the defender never would have thought she would play at the European championships one day. At that time, the Texas-born footballer was pursuing her goals with the U.S. U23 squad and hoping to play in the National Women’s Soccer League.

When the deal fell through, she got an offer to move to Europe. The young player ended up in Iceland, a stark contrast from the warmth of Texas where was raised by parents of Kenyan descent.

“I looked for an agent and started looking at moves abroad. When the offer from Iceland came, initially I definitely found it a bit random. But after I did my research, I thought there was something really charming about it and I ended up taking the plunge,” she said in an interview with FIFA.com.

“The landscape and the weather here could hardly be any more different from Texas… But I came here with the mindset of just wanting to explore and have a great time. I was lucky too that the team I joined had a real family environment and took great care of me, so I settled in and enjoyed it right from the start.”

The now 33-year-old acclimatised quickly and ended up staying longer than expected. She married an Icelander and, in 2019, was granted citizenship and received her first call up to the national team.

“There was a brief thought of, ‘Am I really going to do this?’ But at the same time there was no hesitation at all,” said the mother-of-two. “My roots here are so deep now that I really do feel like I’m an Icelander.

“I’ve learned the language and my teammates are constantly praising me about how well I do with it. And I love that they all speak to me in Icelandic. Even if I ever struggle to get a word out, they just help me – they never switch to English. They’ve embraced me as an Icelander from the first minute I met them.”

Anasi-Erlingsson is the experienced spine that Iceland will be counting on as they play in their fifth consecutive UEFA Women’s EURO. The national team, coached by Thorsteinn Halldórsson, are seeking their first win at the EUROs since 2013.

Iceland kicks off the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 against Finland in Group A on Wednesday, 2 July in Thun, Switzerland.

Brentford held its most recent fan advisory board (FAB) meeting in June.

FAB meetings are a part of the club’s ongoing commitment to consulting and involving fans in key decisions and are a key element of the Premier League’s fan engagement standard.

The meeting was attended by club executives together with FAB members drawn from Bees United and Brentford Independent Association of Supporters (BIAS). The current FAB members are: Stuart Hatcher (co-chair), Don Tanswell, Chris Tate, Sharon Wright (all Bees United), Angelo Basu (co-chair), Dave Minckley, Matthew White and Allyson Woyak (all BIAS).

The FAB focuses on off-pitch matters and provides a sounding board for the club to discuss strategic issues with fan representatives.

A number of working groups focusing on specific topics and projects such as ticketing, food and drink, fan atmosphere and sustainability also report into the FAB, providing more detailed feedback to help steer the club’s decisions and policies.

In the most recent meeting, the FAB discussed the club’s plans to move to digital ticketing, including detailed implementation plans and how Brentford will help fans transition to the new technology.

The group also spoke about plans for fan consultation and involvement for the season ahead, including the suggested outline plan for the FAB meetings and ongoing working group meetings. Ahead of the meeting, an overview of the working group meetings was shared, totalling some 60 meetings over the last season.

Fan atmosphere was also on the agenda. The group discussed how fans and fan groups could help the team by improving the atmosphere during home games at Gtech Community Stadium. Plans are in place for the fan atmosphere working group to meet ahead of the new season.

Brentford staff also provided an update on the work that’s required to confirm that the club has met the requirements set out in the Premier League’s Fan Engagement Standard for the 2024/25 season.

The club is required to publish a fan engagement plan and other key documents such as a revised Supporter Charter ahead of the start of the upcoming campaign.

Read more about the points discussed at our recent FAB meeting

Get to know your fan advisory board members

FAB member Sharon Wright recently spoke to the club’s sustainability manager James Beale about why sustainability is so important to her and how she’s engaged with Brentford to support our efforts in this area.

If you’d like to find out more about the work that the FAB does or have any points that you’d like to raise with them, you can send an email to [email protected] or [email protected], or contact the club via email at [email protected] and your email will be passed onto the FAB members.

Top seed Jannik Sinner eased into the Wimbledon second round on Tuesday, brushing aside fellow Italian Luca Nardi in straight sets.

Unfazed by the searing heat, Sinner barely broke sweat in a 6-4, 6-3, 6-0 victory lasting just one hour and 48 minutes on Court One.

“I’m very happy to come back here to such a special place for me,” Sinner said.

“Playing an Italian is very unfortunate but one has to go through and luckily it was me.”

Sinner last week insisted his surprise decision to part with two of his coaching staff on the eve of Wimbledon would not affect his bid to win the tournament for the first time.

He opted to move on from Marco Panichi and Ulises Badio, his trainer and physiotherapist, as he looks for a new direction following his painful French Open final loss to Carlos Alcaraz.

READ | Elisabetta Cocciaretto stuns Jessica Pegula in first round of Wimbledon

The pair had been employed by Sinner since September 2024, helping him retain the Australian Open crown in January and reach the Roland Garros showpiece in June.

Asked if the decision might jeopardise his Wimbledon challenge over the next fortnight, Sinner was adamant it would be beneficial, with coaches Simone Vagnozzi and Darren Cahill still on his staff.

On the evidence of his dominant display against Nardi the world number one, who returned from a three-month doping ban in May, will be just fine regardless of the coaching shake-up.

“We worked a lot after Halle (grass-court tournament) on the serve and in important moments I felt I was serving very well,” Sinner said.

“First matches are never easy, so I’m very happy with the performance. It’s a new tournament, new challenges.

“If you don’t enjoy to play on these courts, I don’t know where you will enjoy. I will try to keep going.”

Sinner has won three of the past six Grand Slams, but the 23-year-old blew a two-set lead and wasted three match points as Alcaraz staged a comeback for the ages to win the French Open final.

Sinner has failed to reach the Wimbledon final in his four visits, with a last-four appearance in 2023 ranking as his best effort.

The Italian’s Wimbledon preparations were also dented by a shock last-16 defeat against Alexander Bublik at Halle.

Playing world number 95 Nardi for the first time, Sinner had little trouble dispatching the 21-year-old in his first Grand Slam match since that bitter defeat at Roland Garros.