The timeline invites an obvious question… what went wrong in Manchester? The honest answer is that less went wrong than the speed of his exit suggests. Reijnders made 50 appearances in all competitions, scored on his Premier League debut in a 4-0 win at Wolves last August, and finished the season with seven goals, eight assists and winners' medals from both the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup. What he did not have by the spring was a place in the team. He started only two league matches from February onwards, and once Enzo Maresca began reshaping the midfield this summer, with Elliot Anderson arriving for 116 million pounds, Reijnders was training apart from the main squad and watching the Community Shield from a distance.

Reijnders was Serie A's midfielder of the season at Milan as recently as 2025, when he scored 15 goals from central midfield, and he has won 35 caps for the Netherlands. He started three of the Dutch group matches at this summer's World Cup, against Japan, Sweden and Tunisia, before missing the last-32 defeat to Morocco on penalties. At 28, he arrives in the Eastern Province in the middle of his prime rather than at the end of it, which will be critical for what Al Qadsiah’s trying to build in the next few years.

The club from Khobar finished fourth last season after pushing the established Riyadh and Jeddah powers deep into the campaign, with Julian Quinones scoring 33 league goals to take the golden boot. Michel began that season in charge and Brendan Rodgers finished it, having arrived in December, and the reward is the club's first appearance in the AFC Champions League Elite. The new campaign has opened well. Rodgers' side beat Al Shabab 3-1 in their first match last Thursday.

Rodgers spoke minutes after the announcement on Wednesday and set the terms of the season without hesitation. "I promise that we will give our best, and we will be a competitive team this season, and we will do our utmost to win at least one of the four titles we are competing for," he told reporters in Dammam.

Rodgers has built his best teams around controlled possession and a midfielder who carries the ball through the lines, and Reijnders spent his Milan years doing just that, arriving late in the box, breaking pressure with vertical passes. Al Qadsiah scored freely last season through Quinones but lacked a midfielder who could both dictate the rhythm of a match and finish moves himself. Reijnders was signed to be that player, and the extra load of a continental campaign gives Rodgers a practical reason to have paid for one of Europe's most durable midfielders. (Durable is the polite word for a man who has barely missed a training session since leaving Alkmaar, which may explain why City recouped their fee so easily.)

The wider market context is worth registering too. This is the Pro League's second major purchase from English football this summer, after Al Hilal paid 64.5 million euros for his Netherlands team-mate Crysencio Summerville last month. Both deals involve internationals in their twenties, fresh from a World Cup, joining on long contracts. The pattern says more about where the league now shops than any individual fee does, and the fact that the buying club this time is neither Al Hilal nor Al Nassr but a side from Khobar in its third top-flight season says something about how the competitive map is being redrawn. The Saudi registration window remains open until September 6, so this is unlikely to be the final big arrival.