FootBiz Middle East: Cardinale Confirms Al-Nassr Talks as PIF Moves to Clear Debt

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PIF is reported to be using sponsorship money from its own companies to clear SAR800m of Al-Nassr’s debt before selling the club to a group that could include Cristiano Ronaldo. In Jeddah, Al-Ahli wants its coach gone and cannot afford the clause that would get rid of him.

Cardinale Confirms Al-Nassr Talks as PIF Moves to Clear 800 Million Riyals in Debt

Gerry Cardinale has confirmed that RedBird Capital Partners is looking at Al-Nassr. The AC Milan owner told La Gazzetta dello Sport last week that he had been approached about the Saudi champions and that talks were at an early stage. He added that he would like to meet Cristiano Ronaldo to hear his plans for life after playing.

Semafor reported on 19 October that a RedBird-led consortium had met the Public Investment Fund at least twice about buying 70 per cent of the club for around SAR1bn ($267m). Ronaldo is expected to take 20 per cent, a stake his contract reportedly entitles him to if the club opens to private investors. Saudi Media Company and Ibrahim Al-Muhaidib, Al-Nassr’s former president, have also been linked to the group.

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The same report said PIF was arranging sponsorship deals with companies in its own portfolio to pay off about SAR800m ($213m) of Al-Nassr’s debt before any sale. Most of that debt was run up during last season’s title-winning campaign, according to Al Riyadh. The arrangement may go back to the summer, when HUMAIN, PIF’s artificial intelligence company, became an Al-Nassr sponsor at a time when the club was allowed to buy players only with sponsorship or its own commercial income.

The reported terms value Al-Nassr at around SAR1.43bn ($381m), more than Kingdom Holding paid for Al-Hilal. Kingdom valued the Riyadh rivals at SAR1.2bn ($320m) when it bought 70 per cent from PIF in September, despite Al-Hilal’s record revenue of $340m. Much of the premium may reflect the debt PIF’s own companies are lining up to clear. The fund’s 2026-30 strategy leaves sport off its list of priorities and the price it gets for the second of its four clubs would recoup some of that sponsorship spending.

Ronaldo is 41 and his contract ends in June 2027. He told Vogue in the summer that this was probably his last season playing. A shareholding would keep Al-Nassr’s most valuable commercial relationship in place after he retires. People close to the consortium told Semafor that a wider ownership group would let the club cut costs and use media and marketing partners from RedBird and Saudi Media Company.

Al-Ahli Wants Pušić Out but Baulks at a €7.5m-a-Season Bill

Al-Ahli has run out of patience with Marino Pušić three months into a contract that is proving expensive to escape. According to Okaz, the club’s management is convinced the coach must be replaced. Sacking him would trigger a clause requiring Al-Ahli to pay him €7.5m for every season left on a deal that runs until the end of next season.

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The breaking point came on Friday in Riyadh, where Al-Shabab beat the Asian champions 6-1 and the board decided to dismiss Pušić before the final whistle, according to Al-Maidan. Asked afterwards whether it had been his last game, Pušić said the reporter should be ashamed of the question and pointed to the five straight wins he had overseen before the defeat. He then led the squad to Doha for Monday’s AFC Champions League Elite match against Al-Sadd, and the goalless draw came and went without an announcement. Pušić has won 11 of his first 17 matches, a record that has not quietened supporters calling for change.

He arrived as the squad that won back-to-back Asian titles was being dismantled. Pušić replaced Matthias Jaissle, who left for Newcastle United in August. Franck Kessié, the most valuable player at April’s Asian finals, and Riyad Mahrez both left over the summer while PIF was restricting spending at Al-Ahli and Al-Ittihad, according to Semafor.

Rui Pedro Braz, the sporting director who hired Pušić from Al-Jazira days before the season, left the club in early September. Al-Ahli said the parting was by mutual agreement, though Thmanyah reported that it followed a lengthy meeting between senior players and the club’s executives. His successor, Osama Hawsawi, quit within weeks after the executive committee rejected his view that the coach should go, according to Okaz. The board has now come round to the position it would not accept from him.

PIF Tops Up Newcastle Again as It Explores Outside Investment

Chronicle Live reported last month that PIF and the Reuben family have again topped up Newcastle United’s finances, though the size of the payment was not disclosed. Club sources described it as one more in a long line of payments to cover running costs.

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The owners have put the money in as equity rather than debt, so there is nothing to repay and the 85-15 split between PIF and the Reubens is unchanged. Just over a year ago they injected £111.5m, the biggest sum since the 2021 takeover, and they added another £45m last December.

Sources at the fund told Telegraph Sport in August that PIF values Newcastle at more than £2bn and has put about £1bn into the club since 2021. According to the i Paper, PIF has also discussed selling a minority stake to outside investors to help pay for a new stadium while keeping control.

Newcastle finished 12th last season, its lowest position under the current owners, and lost Anthony Gordon, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimarães over the summer. UEFA’s squad cost rules still limit its spending and Semafor reported in July that a settlement with the governing body caps the losses the club is allowed to make. Newcastle still paid Al-Ahli the full £9m release clause for Jaissle, Telegraph Sport reported, in a deal between two clubs controlled by the same fund.

Saudi League Gives Former Sevilla Executive Arroyo Control of Club Affairs

The Saudi Pro League has promoted Jesús Arroyo to chief executive of club affairs, giving him charge of club licensing, club development, financial control and player recruitment. Arroyo spent 18 years at Sevilla, latterly as deputy chief executive, before joining the league as an adviser to its chief executive, Omar Mugharbel, in January 2025. The same reshuffle puts Abdulaziz Al-Humaidi in charge of operations and former Al-Khaleej boss Mohammed Kehel in charge of competitions. Mohammed Al-Juhani, who helped draw up the league’s financial control regulations, becomes Arroyo’s deputy.

Arroyo takes over in the first season of a new allocation model for the Player Acquisition Centre of Excellence, the programme through which the league shares out a central budget to help clubs sign players. Only 22 per cent of that budget is now split equally. Each club’s share of the rest depends on league position over the previous three seasons, television audiences and commercial performance, so the money follows the clubs that are already winning and selling. Enterprise AM reported that Saudi clubs had cut their summer transfer spending almost in half compared with 2025 by mid-August, as the new model arrived alongside tighter budgets at the PIF-controlled clubs. Mid-table clubs and those already short of money are under the most pressure.

Ligue 1 Tender Could Let beIN In Without Buying the Lot

The Ligue de Football Professionnel opened bidding on Tuesday for Ligue 1’s domestic television rights from 2027 to 2032. Broadcasters can buy every match as a single package or take exclusive distribution of Ligue 1+, the league’s own channel. Whoever wins can sell some of those matches on to another broadcaster, provided it keeps at least one for itself. That would let beIN buy a slice of Ligue 1 from the winner instead of bidding for the whole competition.

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L’Équipe has speculated that Canal+ and beIN could do exactly that, with one winning the rights and passing some matches to the other, though it stressed that no agreement had been reached. Bids are due on 3 December and the outcome will be announced the next day, with no sale below a reserve price the league has kept secret. Consultant Pierre Maes told AFP that going back to market little more than a year after launching Ligue 1+ amounted to an admission the channel was not working.

beIN has already shown this summer how far it will go to hold a price. When its LaLiga contract came up for renewal, it offered €16m and then €20m a season to keep rights it had been paying €32m for, according to L’Équipe. LaLiga sold them instead to DAZN and Disney+ for €11.5m a season each until 2029, ending 14 seasons on beIN. Sportcal reported at the time that beIN thought matching the streamers would mean overpaying.

Any bid would put beIN across the table from a league whose board includes the broadcaster’s own chairman, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, also president of Paris Saint-Germain. Relations have been strained since January, when a Paris commercial court ordered beIN to pay LFP Media more than €14m in unpaid instalments for the Ligue 1 match it showed each round.

Dubai United Hires LaLiga to Make a Small Budget Go Further

Dubai United has brought in LaLiga to build its commercial operation as the newly promoted club tries to compete in the UAE Pro League on what its president says is one of the smallest budgets in the division. Javier Tebas unveiled the partnership with club president Ilie Cebanu in Dubai on Tuesday. Neither side disclosed its value.

LaLiga’s Middle East and North Africa office will work on marketing, branding, content, matchday experience, hospitality and fan engagement with support from Madrid. It draws on a club office that already serves the 42 clubs in LaLiga’s two divisions and says it has advised more than 270 teams. Tebas said the aim was to help Dubai United build its own capabilities so it can grow independently.

Speaking to Al-Bayan last month, Cebanu estimated that United’s budget ranked 13th or 14th in the league and was no bigger than Kalba’s, with the owners paying from their own pockets. Not all of the money had been well spent, he conceded, describing the 5-1 defeat at Al-Wasl on the opening day as “a cold shower on a very hot day”. The club’s off-field operations, he added, were now settled enough for it to concentrate on football.

Dubai United has existed only since 2022 and reached the top flight for the first time in May. The club hired Andrea Pirlo on a two-year contract in July 2025, while it was still in the First Division, and his appointment has brought it far more attention than a club of its size would normally attract. LaLiga has been hired to turn that attention into sponsorship and matchday income.