It hasn’t been, by any contextual benchmark, a bountiful World Cup for the four Arab teams who managed to qualify for Russia this summer – the first time so many countries from the MENA region had appeared in a single tournament.
Hefty losses for Saudi Arabia and a series of late heartbreaks for the North African trio of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco has meant that they are each winless in their combined eight games to date.
If any of the players, or indeed their agents, had hoped it would be a launch pad for bigger, more lucrative opportunities, it could hardly gone much worse.
That isn’t to say that some of the players haven’t impressed, though. In particular, Tunisia’s Fakhreddine Ben Youssef and Egypt’s Trézéguet might have done enough to interest scouts of clubs bigger than those in Saudi Arabia and Turkey they respectively play for.
With, in all probability, only one match remaining for the Arab nations in Russia, the players not yet in an established league have a final chance to catch someone’s eye.
Substantial rewards
The rewards, according to Dubai-based sports business professional and player representative Saif Rubie, could still be substantial if they do.
Take, he says, a player currently in the Egyptian Premier League – and there are eight in the current Egypt squad who still play in their country’s domestic league.
“He would be earning around $100,000 per year at the lower end and maybe as much as $500,000 at the higher end, depending if they have somebody like a sponsor to back that signing,” he says.
Even a move to a lower-to-middling club in the English Premier League will expand that salary by around double that number.
“Coming into England, a player from Egypt would be happy to get anything upwards of GBP10,000 a week with big bonuses for making the grade.
Egyptian footballer star Trézéguet
The transfer fee would probably be around GBP2m, and depending how his contract is structured, he would expect a signing-on fee of anything between five to ten percent of that – so possibly an extra GBP200,000.”
In a league where the average salary is now in excess of GBP50,000 a week (or GBP2,6m a year, twice the level of the German Bundesliga), a successful spell could see those figures double or even treble after just one season.
“Playing solidly for two years at that level will make a substantial impact on his value and his pocket,” Rubie says.
Endorsements
It’s not just salary, though. The modern professional benefits from all manner of additional revenue streams from endorsements and image rights and the like.
Cristiano Ronaldo, for instance, earns roughly $35m a year from his relationships with Nike, Tag Heuer, Herbalife, Clear men’s hair products, Sacoor Brother, Pestana hotels and a host of others.
In an Egyptian context, Mohamed Salah has huge deals in place with Vodafone and Uber, and while those deals are beyond most players, it’s not unreasonable that a salary could be doubled by off-field activities.
The boot deal is a key part of this additional remuneration. According to sports lawyer Daniel Geey, a partner at the UK firm Sheridans, this could be around GBP75,000 per year for a tier two club – more if trophies are won – and will require the player to wear that brand’s training or casual gear whenever he’s seen not in his club’s kit.
As the players from the Arab world line up for one last time, then, they still have the chance to change their lives – even if it’s not in quote the way they’d have been hoping two weeks ago.
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