FM23: Ronaldo claims Saudi Pro League is better than MLS. Is that true?

Cristiano Ronaldo was blunt in his assessment: “The Saudi league is better than MLS.”

Back in 2010, LeBron James famously said he was “taking his talents to South Beach” before joining the Miami Heat. Thirteen years later, Lionel Messi made a similarly seismic decision when he joined Inter Miami, prompting reporters to ask Ronaldo if he would ever consider a move to America.

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When Ronaldo said his new league was “better”, he was probably not specifically predicting which team would win if a team of Saudi all-stars faced an MLS all-star team. But that is irrelevant. It’s much more fun to take his words out of context and use a video game to test his theory, so that’s exactly what we have done.

Before we continue, it is worth noting that this is just a light-hearted bit of fun. So if you are a fan of these types of pieces, keep reading to see how this Saudi Arabia all-star team vs MLS all-star team experiment unfolded on Football Manager 2023.

Setting up the match

To ensure this was a competitive fixture and not a meaningless friendly, I had to edit the settings attached to Manchester City and Liverpool, as they play in the Community Shield. Manchester City became the Saudi Arabia all-star team, with Liverpool morphing into the MLS side.

As far as I am aware, you cannot easily modify which teams will face off in the Community Shield, so this was all I had to work with. We also renamed the competition the ‘Was Ronaldo Right Cup?’.

It took me a good few hours to edit each team’s kits to reflect the colours of Al-Nassr (Ronaldo’s team) and Inter Miami (Messi’s team) respectively. If you are in the extremely niche group of people who go to the effort of modifying kits using FM23’s pre-game editor tool, just know that you have gained a new fan.

How the teams were picked

Each team had to have a minimum of two goalkeepers and 25 players in total. Aside from those caveats, there were not many other rules in place.

The Saudi Arabia side almost picked itself. It was basically just a collection of the high-profile players who moved there this summer, with a smattering of Saudi league veterans, which included Ronaldo, David Ospina and Ever Banega.

My first attempt at picking an MLS team was questionable at best. I sent my picks over to The Athletic’s MLS experts and they politely told me I was pretty far off. They said something along the lines of, “There might be a few swaps to make here,” then basically swapped out the entire team.

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DC United manager Wayne Rooney was put in charge of the MLS all-stars, with Al Ettifaq manager Steven Gerrard overseeing Saudi Arabia’s squad.

The teams

Saudi Arabia all-stars

Goalkeepers: Edouard Mendy, David Ospina

Defenders: Kalidou Koulibaly, Romain Saiss, Jan Hyun-soo, Ahmed Hegazi, Saud Abdulhamid, Nawaf Boushal, Alex Telles, Ghislain Konan

Midfielders: N’Golo Kante, Marcelo Brozovic, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Jordan Henderson, Ruben Neves, Seko Fofana, Ever Banega, Franck Kessie

Forwards: Riyad Mahrez, Allan Saint-Maximin, Neymar, Jota, Cristiano Ronaldo, Roberto Firmino, Karim Benzema

MLS all-stars

Goalkeepers: Andre Blake, Djordje Petrovic

Defenders: Walker Zimmerman, Jakob Glesnes, Miles Robinson, Yeimar, Kai Wagner, Diego Palacios, Ryan Hollingshead, Brandon Bye

Midfielders: Riqui Puig, Carles Gil, Thiago Almada, Hector Herrera, Sergio Busquets, Obinna Nwobodo, Joao Paulo

Forwards: Cristian Espinoza, Hany Mukhtar, Lorenzo Insigne, Carlos Vela, Lionel Messi, Denis Bouanga, Jesus Ferreira, Cucho Hernandez

With Rooney and Gerrard in full control

To say this was an onslaught would be an understatement. We simulated 10 games with Gerrard and Rooney in charge and the Saudi Arabia all-stars won all 10.

The composite selection of the very best players to play in America only managed eight goals and did not keep a single clean sheet, despite Jordi Alba and Sergio Busquets starting every game. Messi scored just once in 10 games, with Benzema leading the way for Saudi Arabia with seven goals.

It was an unmitigated disaster for MLS, but there was one saving grace. The man who instigated this whole thing, Ronaldo, barely featured. He was not used as a starter by Gerrard and didn’t manage any goals off the bench.

When Ronaldo said the Saudi Arabian league was better than MLS, it seems likely that he envisioned himself actually having a meaningful role in any kind of fantasy fixture between the two leagues.

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Maybe that is poetic justice for his original comments, but seeing as it was Al Nassr’s talisman that prompted this entire experiment, we had to run another series of tests with him actually involved.

With Ronaldo in the starting XI

Something had to give. The MLS all-star team lost every fixture in the first experiment. The default formation Rooney opted for, a 4-2-3-1, was too open at the back and not potent enough further forward to justify its continued use.

So I took control of both teams, made a few tweaks, and simulated things another 10 times. For Saudi Arabia’s all-stars, the only change was Ronaldo starting ahead of Benzema.

For the MLS all-stars, the changes were more substantial. Ryan Hollingshead was having a torrid time against Neymar, so in came Brandon Bye at right-back. Cucho Hernandez did not score once in the previous experiment, so he was replaced by MLS veteran Carlos Vela in a new 4-3-3 formation.

Do not be fooled by the above picture. Very little changed. After 10 more games, MLS all-stars only triumphed twice and one of those was on penalties.

This time around, Messi managed four goals in 10 appearances, with Vela contributing three goals up front. But it was not enough. Was it my questionable tactical tweaks? Maybe. In fact, let me upgrade that response to: most likely. I may have been the reason this second set of games went so badly for the MLS all-star team.

Jesus Ferreira was another option to start, but according to FM23’s stats, he doesn’t compare favourably with Hernandez or Vela up front. Regardless of who started up front, it is safe to say that after 20 tests, it is likely that wouldn’t have mattered, as the MLS side did not manage a single clean sheet when Ronaldo started.

Takeaways

Messi’s total of five goals in 20 games is well below what you might expect from him, and to make matters worse, Ronaldo scored more goals in half the starts, with eight in 10.

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The MLS all-star team only managed two wins in 20 games. Given the MLS has spending rules in place and limits on the number of foreign players that can play for a team, it is not really surprising that the free-spending Saudi Pro League can field a better all-star side than a league bound by a salary cap.

According to this experiment, it is likely that the average Saudi Pro League player would come up against more individual talent on a weekly basis. It remains to be seen if, say, Al Nassr are definitively better than Inter Miami, but if the two leagues were to ever face off, then it would almost certainly result in a victory for Saudi Arabia’s all-star team, whether Ronaldo was in the starting XI or not.

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