UEFA boss Ceferin: There will be no Champions League in Saudi Arabia

The president of the European football ruling body UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin, stressed that there will be no Champions League final in Saudi Arabia.

"Not during my term, but I won't be here forever," Ceferin said at the Spobis sport business congress in Hamburg.

Recently, the Spanish and Italian federations hosted their respective Supercup finals in Saudi Arabia.

The country has recently invested billions into sport. In football, the Saudi league singed several top stars, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, for exorbitant sums.

The 2034 World Cup is set to take place in Saudi Arabia, while the country also host a Formula One race.

Ceferin, meanwhile, doesn't see Saudi Arabia as a danger to European football. He believes that the strategy of signing football top stars is not the right one.

"If you mainly buy players who can no longer play in Europe and overpay them, are you developing your young players?" he said.

"European fans do two things: They follow their team and their national team. And they follow competitions. They don't follow the players," Ceferin added.

Saudi Arabia has been widely criticized for its human rights record and for sportswashing - using sports to deflect from domestic problems.

The nation, however, is the sole candidate to host the 2034 World Cup and is set to win the bid because of football governing body FIFA's rotation policy, meaning only nations from Asia and Oceania are eligible to host the tournament in that year.