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Originally Posted by Solecismic
LIV was just the beginning, apparently. A Saudi team is offering Mbappe $1.1 billion (including about $300 million in a transfer fee to his current club) for one year.
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To be specific (because it's a reasonably juicy story), Mbappe has one year left on his PSG contract and there's substantial rumors that he's already hush-hush agreed to move to Real Madrid when it expires next summer (which is additionally good for Mbappe because the salary you are offered when you transfer on a free is usually higher because your new team doesn't need to pay a transfer fee).
When Mbappe told PSG earlier this summer that he formally wouldn't be picking up his player option for season 2024-2025, they threw a strop and told him (and intimated in public) that if he doesn't pick it up or sign an extention, that they'll bench him for the year. But also intimated that they'd consider ludicrous transfer offers (remember, they bought him from Monaco in 2018 for ~166M Euro). Ludicrous is really anything of note since most teams won't pay a lot for a player in the final year of their contract, knowing they can get the player for free in <1 year.
So now Al Hilal offers 1/3B in transfer fee to PSG (an offer likely in the realm that PSG would like) and 2/3B in salary for one year for Mbappe. In theory, he could do this and then free transfer to Real Madrid as planned.
Of course, Madrid likely won't be paying him 2/3B annually in salary, so now they have to wonder if a) he might sign a multi-year deal or b) he'll get used to the money and sign an extension while he's in Saudi Arabia.
Complicating the matter is that Madrid's President, Florentino Perez (one of the Super League architects, which, ironically, seems to be what Saudi Arabia is trying to build in-country) has more-or-less promised his fanbase that Mbappe will come to Madrid, even to the extent of letting reigning Ballon d'Or forward Karim Benzema move to, again, Saudi Arabia, and not really replacing him with another center forward.
Honestly, the whole thing couldn't happen to a nicer group of oligarchs.
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I don't see the end-game here. Are they trying to buy one all-star entry into the European leagues?
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In general, sportswashing (see also: LIV, Newcastle United). In specific, they want to build up a good domestic league from scratch. Bootstrap it a bit, apply to switch confederations from AFC to UEFA, and maybe one day you can be on par with a mid-size UEFA league (Portugal? Holland? Belgium?).
Also likely they just have more money than they know how to spend but I like my speculation better.
