It is not a vanity project. That framing is a comfort blanket the European press wraps around itself to avoid thinking.
It is not a retirement home. Brazilian and African players in their twenties are signing there. Several have refused European offers to do so.
What the Saudi Pro League actually is, is a long-term recalibration of where elite football is allowed to exist. Saudi Arabia is not trying to replace the Premier League. It is trying to make sure that when the next generation of stars considers their options, Riyadh is on the list of serious destinations alongside Madrid and Manchester.
That is a fifty-year project. The Europeans are evaluating it on two-year cycles.
The criticism that the football is poor quality is partially true and increasingly outdated. Watch a top-half Saudi match now versus eighteen months ago. The level has risen. The marquee players have raised the floor by demanding more from their teammates. The stadium experience has been rebuilt. Television production matches European standards.
What it lacks is history, which cannot be bought, and competitive depth, which is being purchased in instalments.
The European response has been to mock and to dismiss. This is the same response the Premier League got from Italy in the early 1990s. It is the same response La Liga got from England in the 2000s. Mockery from incumbents is the standard prelude to displacement, not evidence against it.
Whether the Saudi project succeeds depends on whether they keep investing past the point where the European press stops finding it interesting. Everything I have seen suggests they will.