Ivan Toney: Will England striker flourish for country after recall?

There have, of course, been many high-profile footballers who have made the move to Saudi Arabia in recent years.

Five-time Ballon d’Or winner Cristiano Ronaldo is perhaps the most famous of them, but there’s also been Neymar, N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez, who continued to be selected by their respective national teams after making the moves.

Indeed, Toney could come up against his Al-Ahli team-mate Edouard Mendy when England play Senegal next week.

Looking through the list of squads there are plenty of recognisable names playing in the Saudi Pro League but, despite that, the overall standard of the league is perceived as quite low.

In Opta’s most recent Power Rankings the Saudi Pro League was ranked as just the 29th-strongest in the world, just behind the Ecuador Liga Pro.

“Toney has referenced it himself publicly that he has been very surprised by the standard for football in Saudi Arabia,” Gulf-based sports journalist John McAuley, who covers the Saudi Pro League, told BBC Sport.

“It is a lot higher than he expected and obviously that is because of the influx of proper international players coming into the league now.

“Saudi always had a very high standing in Asian football – Al-Hilal are the record four-time winners of the Asian Champions League.

“The level of local players is still very good but when you think of the defenders Toney is up against, he is still playing against Aymeric Laporte at Al-Nassr, Kalidou Koulibaly at Al-Hilal, Danilo Pereira, who came from PSG to Al-Ittihad – so he is still playing against European standard players.”

Regardless of the perception of the league he is playing in, there’s no doubt Toney arrived at this England camp as a player in form, having enjoyed a brilliant scoring run in the second half of the season to help Al-Ahli become champions of Asia.

“He ended up with a run of something like 19 goals in his last 19 league games, finishing two goals behind Cristiano Ronaldo in the race for the Golden Boot,” McAuley added.

“The huge thing, and something that really integrated him with the fans, is he played a key role in Al-Ahli winning the Asian Champions League Elite for the first time.”

“Making the transition, the first moving to Saudi, it was a big one,” Toney told 5 live.

“Obviously, people are going to think ‘how is he going to cope and how is he going to be?’. As you can see from the stats, they speak for themselves.

“It’s been a good season with winning a trophy also. It was a big thing for me, I haven’t won many trophies, but being part of that one was a big moment.”