The Brazilian star joined the SPL club in the summer of 2023 from PSG
Al Hilal were missing their megastar Neymar for almost a year. Even after his arrival to full fitness, the player has missed two games after having featured in the AFC Champions League Elite clash against Al Ain.
The Brazilian had suffered a long-term ACL injury in his left knee. The injury occurred in the FIFA World Cup qualifier game against Uruguay while playing for Brazil on October 17, 2023. Following months of wait, he was back in action in the AFC Champions League. Although the star didn’t do much in the 5-4 win over Al Ain, he was expected to feature in the following games.
But why did he miss the Saudi Pro League game against Al Taawoun and later the King Cup of Champions Round of 16 tie against Al Tai? Well, it has to do more with regulations than any concern regarding his fitness or anything.
What’s the foreign player policy?
The Saudi Arabian Football Federation has a rule for the number of foreign players (one that is from outside of Saudi Arabia or wasn’t born in the country) a club can utilise.
On 29 December 2023, the Saudi Arabian Football Federation did increase the amount of foreign players a club can register. From the 2024-25 season, every club in a league was allowed to register 10 foreign players. Of those 10, eight can be of any age while the other two must be under 21 at the time of registration.
However, in every Saudi Pro League game, a club can only select eight of those foreign athletes in the matchday squad. This rule however isn’t reflected in the King Cup of Champions (King’s Cup). In the King’s Cup, a team can name all 10 of those players.
Why Neymar can’t feature in Saudi Pro League & King’s Cup games?
As we all know, Neymar‘s injury was a long-term one. Hence, Al Hilal deregistered their star in January 2024. Head coach Jorge Jesus utilised the free foreign player slot to bring in Renan Lodi, a left-back. This was done keeping in mind that he wouldn’t really recover in time to be able to play.
For the 2024-25 season, Neymar wasn’t registered back. One might think, the club could have registered him and waited, but that also has its reasons. Al Hilal already had fully fit eight foreign star players above 21 (Neymar is 32, and also falls in this bracket) excluding the former Barcelona player.
The club surely wanted to use the rest of the lot until he recovered. Such was the case with the Saudi giants. Now that Neymar has recovered he and his club will have to wait for January 2025, when the registration list can be updated to continue playing in the league and King’s Cup from mid-season.
However the 32-year-old can still feature in the AFC Champions League games, like he did against Al Ain. As such Neymar will also miss tomorrow’s crucial Al Nassr clash. However, later he is likely to feature against Esteghlal in ACL Elite.
Al Hilal’s current foreign players list 2024-25 season:
Eight foreigners (any age)
- Malcom (Brazil)
- Renan Lodi (Brazil)
- Yassine Bounou (Morocco)
- João Cancelo (Portugal)
- Rúben Neves (Portugal)
- Kalidou Koulibaly (Senegal)
- Aleksandar Mitrović (Serbia)
- Sergej Milinković-Savić (Serbia)
U21 foreigners
- Marcos Leonardo (Brazil)
- N/A
Unregistered foreign player
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