Football transfers: N’Golo Kante joins Karim Benzema at Al-Ittihad after leaving Chelsea
Karim Benzema will be joined by another well-known French player at Al-Ittihad’s club for the next season, which won the Saudi Arabian football championship.
Wednesday saw the completion of N’Golo Kante’s transfer from Chelsea. Al-Ittihad greeted the 32-year-old midfielder with a series of tweets that included the hashtag “WelcomeBox2Box” in reference to his aggressive style of play.
He will allegedly make more than $100 million over the course of a four-year contract with a Jeddah-based team that Nuno Espirito Santo, a former manager of Wolverhampton and Tottenham, would lead. It just defeated Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al-Nasr to win the Saudi league.
Kante, who was one of the finest players in the Premier League in recent years as a back-to-back champion with Leicester and Chelsea, the World Cup with France in 2018, the Champions League with Chelsea in 2021, and has been one of the top players in the league in recent years, has suffered with injuries over the last two seasons.
This hasn’t stopped Al-Ittihad from reportedly spending a lot of money on Kante, a few weeks after signing Benzema when his Real Madrid contract expired. The signing of Kante was not immediately announced on Al-Ittihad’s website.
A move by the kingdom’s sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund to take a majority ownership stake in four of the nation’s top clubs, including Al-Ittihad and Al-Nassr, is fueling spending in the Saudi league and luring big names, even if they are players nearing the end of their careers. The action is a part of a “privatisation project” that encourages public sector organisations to fund sports, prioritising football teams as part of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman-backed programme.
Lionel Messi rejected an offer from Al-Hilal, one of the four clubs, and instead chose to sign with Inter Miami in the United States.
Several top athletes, like Wolverhampton midfielder Ruben Neves, Chelsea goalkeeper Edouard Mendy, and Manchester City winger Riyad Mahrez, have been linked with transfers to Saudi Arabia during this European summer.
