Cristiano Ronaldo’s £480k-per-day strike at Al-Nassr explained: His beef with the Saudis, how loss of allies has left him ‘isolated’, his envy at Karim Benzema, why rival club snubbed him and what the Donald Trump love-in could mean

A luxurious Riyadh residence, three private floors of the Four Seasons hotel and a £480,000-per-day salary are still not enough to maintain the personal contentment of Cristiano Ronaldo, who has gone on strike in Saudi Arabia.

His refusal to play in for Al-Nassr in their Saudi league game on Monday makes a mockery of the Saudis’ conviction that throwing the equivalent of a small country’s GDP at him would make him a willing participant in their sportswashing project. The preening Ronaldo is also a laughing stock – surrounding by fawning hangers-on who are too entranced to tell him he looks like a ludicrous money-grabber.

But Ronaldo’s discontent differs from that of others who have found a life of meaningless football in the desert to be unbearable, such as Jordan Henderson, who took a severe financial hit to escape Al-Ettifaq, and Jonjo Shelvey who took sleeping pills to stave off the boredom of Dubai. 

Ronaldo’s refusal to play is a protest against the Saudi state’s unfair treatment of his club, as he sees it, compared with three others in which the Gulf country’s Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) – which also owns Newcastle United – has a 75 per cent stake.

Sources in Portugal suggest that the self-styled ‘CR7’ is offended about the PIF spending less on for Al-Nassr than for Al-Hilal, the Saudi champions, in the transfer market – a grievance exacerbated by Al-Hilal signing Karim Benzema from Al Ittihad, another of the PIF quartet, at the weekend.

While Al-Nassr have only signed Haydeer Abdulkareem, a 21-year-old Iraqi midfielder, this month, Benzema’s arrival at Al-Hilal follows heavy investment on Pablo Marí, formerly of Flamengo, and Darwin Núñez from Liverpool.

‘It is his competitiveness which is behind this fury,’ a source in Portugal says of Ronaldo. ‘A desire to see his team do better, but also a personal competitiveness’

‘It is his competitiveness which is behind this fury,’ a source in Portugal says of Ronaldo. ‘A desire to see his team do better, but also a personal competitiveness. He saw himself as being No 1 but Al-Nassr have trailed Al-Hilal and now he sees Benzema getting the big spotlight, becoming their new big name.’

Since his arrival in Saudi in 2023, Ronaldo, who turns 41 on Thursday, has won only one Arab Champions League and is still 39 goals short of his aim of reaching 1,000 career goals.

The preposterous notion of a £177m-a-year player complaining about a lack of investment on his club has bemused many within the Saudi game, though Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr manager, Portuguese Jorge Jesus, evidently shares this sense of injustice. He has justified the team’s poor form by saying that the club ‘did not have the political power of its rival’. 

The controversy this created led some at Al-Hilal to demand the coach’s suspension, though the request was denied.

Data on Saudi club player investment extracted from Transfrmrkt shows that Al-Hilal have spent a lot more on transfer fees in the past three years than Ronaldo’s club. They have racked up a net loss of £538million in the market, while Al-Nassr have been £324m in the red, Al-Ittihad £318.53m in the red and Al Ahli have lost £282.3m.

But Ronaldo’s complaint is exploded when it comes to wages – the real barometer of where a team ought to be in its league. Al-Hilal’s total wage bill is roughly half that of Al-Nassr’s £300m per season. And while Ronaldo’s club concentrates a significant proportion of this cash on a handful of marquee players, like himself, Al-Hilal have achieved superior results by deploying their resources across the squad intelligently, combining domestic talent with foreign acquisitions. 

Al-Hilal have thus been able to maintain consistent performances domestically and continentally – they also beat Manchester City in the Club World Cup – without less dependence on individual superstars.

Al-Hilal’s chief executive is former Man City commercial executive Esteve Calzada, a big friend of City CEO Ferran Soriano, who built a career in the game after successfully branding himself a football business media expert in Spain. 

Ronaldo has been the face of Saudi Arabian football since he moved there in 2023 after his second spell at Manchester United 

While Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr have only signed a 21-year-old Iraqi midfielder this month Karim Benzema’s arrival at Al-Hilal follows heavy investment on Darwin Nunez among others 

‘Ronaldo saw himself as being No 1 but Al-Nassr have trailed Al-Hilal and now he sees Benzema getting the big spotlight, becoming their new big name,’ says a source

Calzada, who also once managed the image rights of Kevin de Bruyne, David Silva and others, demonstrated a clear indifference to signing Ronaldo on a short-term deal when coming under pressure to make him the face of Saudi Arabia for Al-Hilal at the Club World Cup last summer. Ronaldo’s deal with Al-Nassr had expired but he subsequently signed a new one with the club. 

‘As much as I respect Ronaldo as a huge player – as we all recognise he is – it’s certainly completely counter-intuitive that you bring the biggest player of your biggest opponent to play with you,’ Calzada said. ‘Even more when it’s only for three to four weeks.’

While Al-Hilal have demonstrated patience and strategic foresight, with three full-time managers in the last four years and the coup of recruiting Simone Inzaghi from Inter Milan after parting company with Jorge Jesus last summer, Al-Nassr have worked their way through five full-time coaches since Ronaldo arrived.

There’s been more upheaval behind the scenes of Ronaldo’s club in recent weeks. Sporting director Simão Coutinho and general manager José Semedo, both Portuguese and close to him, had lost some of their control, at the PFI’s insistence. Portuguese sources suggest this has deepened Ronaldo’s sense of ‘isolation’ at the club.

His hyper-sensitivity is borne of the way the game has indulged him, rather than give him reality checks. The early evidence is to be found in his bizarre ghostwritten book, Moments, published when his Manchester United career had just taken hold in 2007. He told why he enjoyed his first modelling experience with Pepe Jeans, ‘because I had to pose side by side with a professional model’. The book, he explained, was, ‘my image, reflected in the mirror of my soul’.

Between working on his six-pack, and displaying it on Instagram, he found time for the film Ronaldo, an hour and 42 minutes of self-absorption devoted substantially to a love-in between ‘CR7’ and his agent, Jorge Mendes, of whom the player says, with utter lack of irony: ‘He is the best. The Cristiano Ronaldo of agents.’

Money, including those Saudi wages, has become meaningless to a man who cannot even work out how to spend it. The cars are the famous symbol of this, not just for their value but for their sheer redundancy. Ronaldo has openly stated he has ‘lost count’ of his vehicles, estimating more than 40. Among them are multiple Bugattis — including a Chiron and a Veyron — each worth well over £1.5m, alongside Ferraris, McLarens, Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis and Bentleys.

Private jet travel has been routine for years, including a customised Gulfstream aircraft worth tens of millions, fitted with bedrooms, lounges and branded interiors. The Soccerleaks scandal detailed his alleged tax avoidance. In 2019, he accepted a plea deal with Spanish authorities in which he paid an £16million fine, later reportedly reduced, and accepted a 23-month suspended prison sentence.

Al-Hilal have had plenty of success while Ronaldo has had very little in Saudi Arabia  

Ronaldo and his partner Georgina Rodríguez with Donald Trump at the White House 

Ronaldo is not the only player in Saudi behaving disgracefully, given the fortune he’s being paid. Benzema felt ‘disrespected’ by the PIF at Al‑Ittihad, having received a contract renewal offer tied more to image rights which included a pay cut. He ‘declined’ to play in a game during the dispute, which was settled by his Al-Hilal move. N’Golo Kante also refused train at Al‑Ittihad as negotiations stalled over his move to Fenerbahçe, for whom he is desperate to join. The Saudis are reaping what they sowed.

Al‑Ittihad are one of a number of clubs who want to be in the running to sign Mohamed Salah this summer, a move which would overshadow Ronaldo yet more, should he stay that long. The MLS could beckon for him, should any of its franchises be willing to pay the £44m release clause of a player contracted to his Riyadh club until 2027.

The collective swooning over him there will extend to Donald Trump, given Ronaldo’s meeting with the US President at the White House when he joined a Saudi delegation 10 weeks ago. He later addressed Trump through Instagram to tell him he would help him ‘inspire new generations to build a future defined by courage, responsibility and lasting peace’.

This love-in came three years after a US judge dismissed a rape allegation lawsuit against Ronaldo because the accuser’s lawyer relied on leaked and stolen records. Ronaldo denied the allegations and has never been charged.

In Saudi Arabia, he can complain all he likes about preferential treatment for other state-owned sides and a league rigged by PIF, but the unvarnished truth is that, for all those millions earned, this ultra-competitive player joined the wrong club.