Ruben Neves moving from Wolves to Saudi Arabia didn’t harm his national team ambitions, with Roberto Martinez continuing to select him for Portugal.
He will, of course, have been partly helped by Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Al Nassr, so Martinez can hardly do anything but fully appreciate the Saudi Pro League.
Neves plays for Al-Hilal, having joined the club from Wolves in Juen 2023. The 27-year-old had repeatedly been linked with other Premier League clubs, but it didn’t appear that any were willing to go to the financial levels Wolves were asking for.
In the end, they were able to pick up something approaching £50m from Al-Hilal. Neves himself received some criticism when he made the move, with claims that he was only doing so for the money and that he lacked football ambition.
Those claims appear to have stung Neves, and he’s bitten back a little during the current international break.
O Jogo quote the midfielder as saying: “I invite those people to watch Saudi football. If you compare my GPS data from Saudi football to English football, I run even more in Saudi football, with the difference being that I run in 40 degrees. I feel very well prepared and I think I’m in a great phase physically. Both Cristiano and I came in today and demonstrated once again that Saudi football is not inferior to European football, especially in terms of physicality.”
Al-Hilal are currently top of the Saudi Pro League, with six points from their first two games.
