Football's a proper team sport with loads of direct physical contact, quite different from most Olympic stuff. People might forget this, but China was actually the original "Saudi Arabia". They were splashing cash on top foreign players way before Saudi Arabia did. If I have to make a guess, I think it has something to do with how football culture grew there. Anyway, China's youth teams have been pretty good lately across the age groups, and with that massive population, they could speed things up a lot.
Comparing China with KSA football wise makes no sense.
China was never much of powerhouse when it comes to football. Neither their national team nor domestic league.
They even used to (and still do) naturalize a lot of foreigners (Brazilians etc.) to play for them. Much like tiny Qatar (250.000 natives) have been doing (although most of them are fellow Arabs - often born in Qatar) with great success (2 times Asian Cup winners in a row).
KSA best achievements in football came long before the large investments in the domestic league (you could argue that those investments have been to the detriment of the local talent).
KSA is one of the few Asian teams to qualify from the group stages in a World Cup (only Japan and South Korea have done that so far in history since 1930), second most joint Asian Cup wins and most finals of all teams alongside Japan. We are one of Asia's football giants historically and traditionally. So we have historically over performed compared to our population size. Best domestic football league in Asia as well. Most succesfull club team in Asia (Al-Hilal) etc. which was the case before the investments in the domestic league BTW.
However a World Cup and competing against the top, top teams (elite) like Spain and the best European and South American teams is a completely different ballgame.
Also have in mind that football is the most competitive sport in the world. The competition is unlike that of any other sport.
Also China, from what I have seen and know, seem to excel in niche sports. I don't see them dominating the biggest sports out there such as football, basketball, tennis, hockey etc.
They tend to dominate badminton, table tennis, gymnastics and such sports. Which in places like KSA are barely practiced by anybody because everything is about football which has its downside.
KSA should focus on athletics, combat sports. All places we could easily excel in with our Afro-Arab community and otherwise. Focus on some niche sports too but almost everything is about football with barely any other sport even being remotely close. Outside traditional local sports such as falconry, horse racing, shooting/hunting etc.
Should focus on identifying local talents early on and run some of those sports schools that China and others are running. Either that or copy the US college sport system.
Anyway outside of football most sports in KSA, outside the traditional ones, were until recently frowned upon and barely practiced due to our Sahwa era so we are basically beginning from ground zero. No doubt that things will only improve from here onwards.
