Al-Hilal buy Malcolm from Zenit

Saudi Arabia’s aggressive policy of buying up well-known players playing in European leagues has also affected Russia. The Saudi club “Al-Hilal” acquires the top scorer of the previous Russian championship Malcolm from the flagship of the national football “Zenith”. The deal is valued at €50 million and will be one of the most expensive in the history of the Russian Premier League (RPL). For Zenit, it seems to make the issue of strengthening the squad with new high-quality players even more urgent, since the Brazilian striker is not the first noticeable loss of St. Petersburg before the next national championship starting on Friday.

The fact that “Al-Hilal” and “Zenith” reached a principled or even “decisive” agreement on the transition of 26-year-old Malcolm, the Saudi edition reported Ariyadhiah, as well as several other media resources. Talking about the terms of the Brazilian’s personal contract with the Saudi club and his annual salary, they name figures ranging from €10 million to €18 million per year. But various sources are unanimous about the amount of the transfer: it should be €50 million. This is €10 million more than Zenit paid for Malcolm in 2019, when they bought him from Barcelona, ​​which released an extremely promising, but injured player.

If the transaction is carried out, it will become one of the largest in the history of the domestic championship. If we take only the sales of RPL players, then only the transition in 2016 from the same Zenit to Shanghai, compatriot Malcolm Hulk, was more expensive than it. He was included in a fairly solid list of celebrities who were lured away with the help of powerful financial incentives by representatives of the Chinese championship in the middle of the last decade. He suddenly had a desire, which disappeared soon, however, to compete in terms of spending on players with the “big European five”.

Malcom’s transfer is similar to the Hulk’s transfer in this sense. The inconspicuous Saudi Arabian championship announced suddenly awakened ambitions at the end of last year, when the An-Nasr club poached five-time Golden Ball winner Cristiano Ronaldo, who had just broken off relations with Manchester United.

The current summer transfer campaign has turned into an attraction of Saudi generosity.

Within its framework, local clubs have already acquired more than two dozen players from Europe. Among them are many real stars, and veterans, and athletes in the prime of life like Karim Benzema, Ngolo Kante, Roberto Firmin, Edouard Mendy, Marcelo Brozovic. Moreover, judging by the next transfer news appearing almost daily, their list will increase significantly until the fall.

As of Wednesday, excluding the Malcolm deal, the Saudi Arabian championship in summer investment in rookies, which went over €200 million, was only slightly behind the big five championships, according to Transfermarkt. And about half of them accounted for Al-Hilal, which surpassed all competitors in aggressiveness. In June, he lost the fight to the American Inter Miami for the main asset available on the market – Lionel Messi, who said goodbye to PSG. Still, his squad of recruits makes a strong impression. It has three top players: Portuguese defensive midfielder Ruben Neves from Wolves, Senegalese defender Kalidou Koulibaly from Chelsea and Serbian midfielder Sergei Milinkovic-Savic from Lazio. Now they have added a striker who had a great time last season. In it, Malcom made a huge contribution to Zenit’s fifth consecutive victory in the Russian Championship, with 23 goals, winning the title of its top scorer. And the striker’s club successes finally forced the coaching staff of the Brazilian national team to pay attention to him. Malcolm’s debut in it took place in June.

Meanwhile, his departure seems to add relevance to the issue of the need to strengthen the St. Petersburg base.

The fact is that Zenit has already managed to suffer quite serious losses in the offseason. For example, the Brazilian Wendel, a core player in the middle line, who did not want to stay in Russia, did not get into the club’s application. And Daler Kuzyaev, an important figure in attacking schemes, will continue his career in the French Le Havre. At the same time, a number of sources claim that in Saudi Arabia, in addition to Malcolm, they are also interested in another leader of the Zenit attack, also from Brazil, the main playmaker of the Claudinho team.

Really sonorous purchase in the assets of “Zenith” is only one and only. This is the former extreme defender of Mario Fernandez, beaten by St. Petersburg on Saturday in the Super Cup match for CSKA and the Russian national team, whose abilities remain a mystery due to a long downtime. In addition, several resources reported that Zenit had agreed with Red Star Belgrade on the transfer of a young and fairly rated Serbian defender Strahini Erakovic (he is estimated at € 7 million). A Sport24 assures that the Russian flagship will announce the conclusion of a contract with him even before the start of the championship. But, apparently, the contract provides that Eraković will play for Crvena Zvezda on loan for another year.

Alexey Dospekhov