With lessons from Chinese league, US owner wants to make Saudi club Brighton of the desert

If Ben Harburg has his way, Al-Kholood will become the Saudi Arabian version of Brighton and Brentford, a solid top-flight club that sustains its existence by developing and then selling players to the bigger teams.

Not that sustainability is something you would necessarily associate with the Saudi Pro League, which in its current iteration is very much a sporting example of what happens when oil money and ambition collide.

Splashy signings and ageing stars have largely characterised its most recent history, one of the reasons the American businessman’s decision to pump his money into the team has raised eyebrows.

Especially as the desert kingdom had the dubious honour of rising to fourth this summer in the list of countries that pay the most in footballer salaries.

The US$1.138 billion it costs to keep the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Ivan Toney and the rest happy puts it only behind the English Premier League (US$2.438 billion), Serie A (US$1.270 billion) and Spain’s La Liga (US$1.235 billion).

But where others might see a castle built on pillars of sand, the managing partner at global investment firm MS Capital sees a “true growth market” less vulnerable to the vagaries of superstar talent than Major League Soccer in the US, or on “the downslope”, as he believes Italy to be.