He May Have The Money, But Jota Is Not Going To Enjoy Life After Celtic Much.

When Jota left this club to join the Saudi League, for the kind of money even a merchant banker might consider a gross obscenity, I thought he would probably hate it.

He’d hate the heat. He’d hate the cultural changes. He’d hate the travelling. He’d hate the standard of the league, which is for all the bling now attached to it is poorer than our own top flight although obviously he and other players are being brought in to change that.

What I didn’t expect, and what has now become clear, is that Jota has a whole different set of problems. His club seems wilfully determined to move him out on loan somewhere, anywhere, whilst still being in the country.

Which for most new signings in a new land would be fine, except that one of his reasons for going there was a Portuguese manager and the presence of other Portuguese players in the squad.

There are no guarantees of that elsewhere.

One of the things that will very swiftly become apparent to Jota is that he hasn’t really been signed to play football at all, which is just as well as it’s looking as if he’s not going to get to do much of that for a while yet.

No, he’s been signed, as a lot of others have, to increase the lustre of the league and to act as a sort of sporting ambassador for the ruling regime. It’s a PR exercise more than anything else, and that’s a bad thing on its own in terms of his future.

But what’s worse is that his employers aren’t really a football club either, but that self-same regime, and they can pretty much do with him whatever they like at this point.

If they want to move him four times in a season, if they want him to go out and play the equivalent of public park football against sixth rate players, ruining any chance of his developing into a genuine European, or even world level, talent then that’s just how it’s going to be.

The money will be there. Of course. It’s the reason he went, and it will change his life, and after all it’s only a few years and then he’s free to do whatever he wants with his enormous wealth. It’s just that those few years are shaping up as if they are going to be like slow water torture.

I wish I could think well of this guy and the choice he has made.

But the greed inspired endorsement of a planet poisoning petrostate and its leadership, and one with such backward ideas on other issues – the reason for the outpouring of disgust against Jordan Henderson – greatly reduces my capacity for sympathy. Nevertheless, if he feels like he was slightly misled if not outright sold a pup I can see why, and I can understand he’d be angry.

Nobody should be treated like that … but in some ways that’s what he’s signed up to.

He’s owned now, by a regime which barely views him as a person far less the superstar he was promised he’d be. And they will use him as they wish at least as long as he’s contractually obligated to dance to their tune. He will have plenty of time on those long journeys to games to think not only on what he’s gained, but on what he has undoubtedly lost.