4 high-profile stars you had no idea moved to the UAE Pro League this summer

The United Arab Emirates, home to the Burj Khalifa, expensive hotels, social media influencers, Richard Keys, and Andy Gray. A place of blurry heat, oil, gas, and unfathomable wealth. The UAE is also where Adel Taarabt is currently attempting to make sure the streets never forget him.

Taarabt ain’t the only one, though. Paco Alcacer has been over there for a little while now and, this summer, a handful of big name ballers have joined Paco and Adel over in the UAE.

We’ve sifted through the data with Richard Keys’ really expensive fine-tooth hand-hair comb made of crude oil and diamonds whatnot, and identified four players you might not know have joined the UAE Pro League.

Nabil Fekir

If you haven’t seen much of Nabil Fekir recently, let us tell you, he’s grown a gloriously square beard. A beard that makes his entire head look a cuboid. Like a Lego figure or a Minecraft character.

Fekir is quite the coup for Al-Jazira—he’s only 31, still pretty much at the peak of his powers, and fresh from Five seasons with Real Betis in La Liga.

Al-Jazira’s chairman is one Sheikh Mansour, who you may know as the owner of Manchester City. Fans of Fulham and Middlesbrough, you might be interested to know that Fekir will be joining scorer of that one absolutely screamer Neeskens Kebano at Al-Jazira.

Mohamed Elneny

Mohamed Elneny was well-liked by Arsenal fans, but he just wan’t going to push Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard, Jorginho, Thomas Partey or, now, Mikel Merino out of that team.

The Egyptian Pirlo joined Fekir and Kebano at Al-Jazira this summer, having come to the end of his contract in North London after eight-and-a-half years with the Gunners.

Elneny played alongside Mikel Arteta in Arsenal’s midfield for six months before Arteta retired. The Egyptian was a link between the Wenger and Arteta eras at the club, and he loved it dearly. He told arsenal.com:

“I’ve never seen a group of players like this. Everyone supports each other and loves each other, and works as a family. I’m going to miss them, they’ve been my friends for so long.

“We’re going to be friends forever. I’m going to be supporting them now in front of the TV and sometimes I’m going to come to the stadium to watch them. I’m sure they’ll have an amazing year next year as well because they deserve it.”

So that nice, isn’t it?

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Leroy Fer

Former Norwich, QPR, and Swansea midfielder Fer has just signed for Al-Nasr in the UAE (not to be confused with Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia). Do you want to hear something interesting about Leroy Johan Fer that you might not know?

Fer once accidentally bought a €30,000 horse for his girlfriend who lived in a block of flats. The man was idly scrolling on his phone when he heard the auctioneer say ‘€30k’ and bid just for fun, since horses had been going for half-a-million euros in previous lots.

Turns out nobody else bid, and when Fer put his phone down, he discovered he had a horse that he couldn’t care for. He tried to give the horse to his hippophile (that means ‘horse lover’ — swear down) girlfriend, to which she was essentially like, What the absolute hell are you talking about, Leroy? I live in a block of flats.

Leroy told The Guardian:

“Thankfully, about 10 minutes later, someone came up to me and said: ‘Do you really want that horse?’ I said: ‘Nah, I was just fooling around.’ He offered to buy it off me for €35,000, so I made a bit of money. But for 10 minutes I was thinking: ‘Shit, I’ve got a horse.”

The man accidentally bought a horse because of his own inattentiveness, and ended up making five grand. What’s the moral of this tale?

Lazar Markovic

Liverpool signed flair-riddled winger Markovic from Benfica back in 2014, for a fee of £20m. He played 34 times for the Reds in his first season, then went out on successive loans to Fenerbahce, Sporting, Hull, and Anderlecht, before being sold off to Fulham, for whom he made one solitary competitive appearance.

Markovic carved out a decent career for himself at Partizan and then Gaziantep—a team we like because they sound a bit like the mummy in The Mummy. The Serbian has now signed for Baniyas in Abu Dhabi, rubbing shoulders with the rich, the well-connected, and Keys & Gray.