In world soccer, the top 4 leagues have consistently been the Premier League in England, Bundesliga in Germany, Serie A in Italy, and La Liga in Spain. They shuffle around a bit sometimes but are always in the top 4 in some order.
These are all long-established leagues though, which have produced countless stars of the game who have gone on to achieve incredible things in their careers. Their stock has grown slowly over time to the point they are now deeply ingrained in the minds of fans, and there is prestige attached to playing in them.
MLS is a new breed of soccer league. One that has plenty of money, but very little history, so it is still trying to forge a place for itself on the world stage. This is something it is achieving too, being more widely followed now than ever before
However, MLS is not alone in vying for the attention of the rest of the world. There is another wealthy league attracting top players with huge salary packages and bagging headlines in the process – the Saudi Pro League.
Despite being thousands of miles apart, there are clear comparisons to be drawn between MLS and the Saudi Pro League. Both are using their huge resources to attract top-tier talent who are nearing the end of their careers, for a start, and this is naturally causing people to ask which is the better league.
There is a bit of an MLS vs the Saudi Pro League debate going on, and I want to get to the bottom of it.
Global Ranking
The question of which is the better league is quite easy to answer actually.
The world’s soccer leagues are frequently ranked by various different organisations, all using their own criteria. Well whichever one you look at, you will see MLS ranked between 10th and 15th, and the Saudi pro League ranked between 25th and 30th.
Indeed, I covered the fact that MLS broke into the top 10 leagues as ranked by OPTA for the first time in July 2024.
OPTA would be seen as the most reputable source of information for this sort of thing, given the volume of stats they collect and hold. They re-rank the leagues regularly and even though MLS is no longer in the top 10, they are still way ahead of the SPL.
The overall rank is decided by giving each team in that league an individual score, then adding them up and averaging them. This means a league with two amazing teams and 18 really poor teams could rank below a league with no amazing teams but 16 decent middle of the range teams. It looks at the league as a whole.
This isn’t a perfect system, but it’s good enough to draw fairly robust conclusions more broadly. It also cuts through the noise of big name players being tempted over to Saudi, which might make it seem like that should be the stronger league given some of the players over there.
Even in this area though, things aren’t quite what they seem.
Quality of Players
A quick look at the rosters of some of the top teams in Saudi Arabia will tell you that the Pro League has more star names than MLS.
Look at some of the names on this list of players in the league for the 2024/25 season:
- Ronaldo
- Neymar
- Ivan Toney
- Ruben Neves
- Sadio Mane
- N’Golo Kante
- Karim Benzema
- Riyad Mahrez
- Aleksandar Mitrovic
- Moussa Diaby
- Joao Cancelo
MLS has a few star names of their own, the likes of Messi and Luis Suarez, but in terms of globally recognised players there are far fewer plying their trade in the US than in Saudi.
This is partly due to the rules surrounding high value transfers and wages in MLS compared to Saudi, but it’s mainly because a handful of teams in the Saudi Pro League have almost unlimited resources. They can pay ridiculous fees and inflated wages, attracting players who want to cash in at the end of their time as players.
MLS is a more challenging league, so is more attractive to players who want to keep playing at the highest level possible considering their age. That’s not to say they can’t do well financially in MLS too, I’m sure Messi earns more than $20 an hour, but for most players it’s not on the same level as in Saudi.
It might look like the Saudi Pro League is the winner in this department then, but if that’s what you think you are being blinded by a small number of big names. You need to look at the league as a whole.
MLS may have fewer superstars in its ranks, but pound for pound, the players in MLS are far better than those in the Saudi Pro League. I’m talking about those players most people wouldn’t know the names of unless they were supporters. There is more quality in the rank and file in MLS, despite the ‘lack’ (if you want to call it that) of star names.
Competitions
It’s hard to compare the two leagues in terms of international competitions, because so much depends on the format and the quality of their competition.
For example, Liga MX is MLS’ biggest competitor in international club competitions, and they are usually ranked quite close together in OPTA’s league rankings, so the competition between the two is fierce. Liga MX were ranked higher for a long time though, so MLS clubs were technically going up against tougher opponents when competing for the likes of the CONCACAF Champions League.
The Saudi Pro League enters teams into the Asian Champions League Elite (ACL Elite), so they go up against teams from leagues in Japan, South Korea, and the UAE. With all due respect, these leagues are not a patch on Liga MX, and the Saudi Pro League ranks above all of them in OPTA’s league rankings, albeit not too far ahead of South Korea’s K League 1. Nevertheless, SPL teams are competing against a lower calibre of opponent.
Saudi clubs have won the ACL Elite 6 times since their formation in 1976, whereas MLS clubs have only won 2 CONCACAF Champions League titles since their formation in 1996.
Again we have to accept this isn’t the best comparison, since MLS started 20 years after the SPL, it only had 10 teams to begin with, and they have been up against tougher opposition clubs in general. Still, the Saudi Pro League has technically had more success in international competitions.
History
Even though MLS is younger than the Saudi Pro League by 20 years, most of us would be more familiar with MLS teams than those from Asia.
It’s not just the language or culture barriers that kept the two worlds apart.
Before 2021, the Saudi Pro League was not really on anybody’s radar. A few big players like Rivaldo and Denilson had briefly played there in the early 2000s (and Stan Collymore from England), but none of them stayed longer than a year.
No teams were making headlines on the world stage, so it was for all intents and purposes a small domestic league just getting on with its football for local fans.
MLS, on the other hand, has always attracted a steady stream of big name players, just not all at the same time. It has had several lapses in interest and revivals, and has also attracted more English players which is possibly another reason why Westerners are more familiar with it.
The news between America and Europe is much more widely shared than the news between Saudi and America or Saudi and Europe too, so MLS has always felt closer to home for European fans than the SPL. It is generally held in higher esteem too. In terms of prestige, having a successful career in the US would be more impressive than having a successful career in Saudi Arabia.
That said, MLS has been pushing for dominance for a long time, whereas the Saudi Pro League has only just lit the fire. They might have been founded in 1976, but it wasn’t until 2021 that the country got behind soccer and began to make an effort to expand the league’s reputation. It’s all part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative, which aims to diversify the country’s fortunes away from just oil, focussing on other areas like sport, entertainment and tourism.
This is why there has been such an injection of money into their soccer league, and if they continue at the rate they have been going, the league could realistically be seen as equal to MLS in the near future.