Video: outside the top 30! A huge shock in the global ranking of the Saudi league

"Ronaldo and the stars' revolution alone are not enough"!

Opta's latest ranking of the world's strongest football leagues has sparked a wide wave of controversy among sports fans and in the Saudi media. The Roshn League landed in a lowly position, despite the major surge the competition has witnessed in recent years and its pulling power with a host of the game's most prominent stars and coaches. It has renewed questions about the criteria that give some leagues an advantage over others.

The 6 November 2026 update ranked the Saudi league 38th in the world, with an average rating of 74.7 points, trailing the Polish and Peruvian leagues. England topped the list, followed by Spain, Germany, Italy and France.

Saudi broadcaster Battal Al-Qaws welcomed Enrico Turcato, Opta's representative in Italy, onto his Al Arabiya programme "Fil Marma" to unpack the reasons behind this shocking ranking and explain how the network rated the Roshn League.

The ranking does not hinge on a handful of world stars scattered across a few teams, Turcato explained, but on how competitive the whole competition is. A small cluster of clubs boasting top-tier players simply isn't enough to push a league's rating towards the top.

What matters most, the Opta representative stressed, is the number of teams operating at an elite level and their ability to crank up the competition. That competitive depth, he explained, is not shared equally across every club in the Saudi league.

Put another way, the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Riyad Mahrez and those who followed them do not on their own measure the strength of the Roshn League. Turcato ties his verdict to the average level of the teams, not just the technical and marketing pull of its most prominent clubs.

The televised encounter threw up a striking moment. Battal Al-Qaws asked his guest to name five clubs from the Peruvian league, which ranks above the Saudi competition, and Turcato couldn't come up with a single name.

Hours earlier, Saudi media figure Waleed Al-Farraj had stirred up controversy over the competitiveness of the Saudi league. His chosen yardstick? Crowd attendance. He was responding to a viewer who had asked why the programme kept focusing on the big four in the Kingdom.

Speaking on his show Rotana Sport with Waleed on the "Rotana Khaleejia" channel on Saturday evening, Al-Farraj said: "The stands are empty... I respect and appreciate all the clubs, but do you think that the 18 clubs of the league have the same impact?".

Saudi Arabia, he argued, has just four clubs that form the foundation of "following, attendance, marketing and money, and the rest complete the league. Proving one's presence is not by raising one's voice, but by attendance inside the stadium", as he put it.